UNRWA Defenders’ False Choice

By Seth Mandel

Friday, January 03, 2025

 

The end appears nigh for UNRWA, the UN aid group that essentially became an agency of Hamas’s war government. Since UNRWA’s entire reason for being is to prolong Palestinian statelessness and to fuel the conflict in perpetuity, its closure is also good for Palestinians, certainly in the long run—especially because the UN already has a refugee agency.

 

Everything UNRWA does is replaceable. But you wouldn’t know that from the disingenuous campaign to guilt Israel into leaving the corrupt agency to do its work. The gevalt campaign against closing UNRWA also finds its defenders making a fairly wild argument about situational ethics. UNRWA’s defense, in fact, makes clear that the agency absolutely must go.

 

Here is the lede of a highly editorialized article in the Wall Street Journal today: “Saeed Hashash, a father of four, was connected to a dialysis machine when he learned that Israel had passed laws that would halt the operations of the agency that pays for his kidney treatment.”

 

There is no doubt that, if nothing is done to replace the kidney treatment—a big “if” considering the funds for it exist and the UN itself isn’t closing up shop, not to mention the amount of medical care Israel offers needy Palestinians—Hashash’s life is put in immediate danger.

 

The UNRWA employee who administers Hashash’s treatment will not be there anymore. But you know who else won’t be there? The UNRWA employee seen on camera abducting a murdered Israeli from Be’eri on Oct. 7 and taking the body to Gaza. The UNRWA employee who allegedly held an 84-year-old hostage from Nir Oz will also not be there.

 

I won’t belabor the point: Should the organization that participated in Oct. 7 attacks be immune from accountability because it also sometimes provides treatment to people? The answer is of course not. And UNRWA had plenty of opportunities to address its manifold problems. The foreclosing of Hashash’s treatment is UNRWA’s choice. It would rather close and let Hashash suffer than return bodies to grieving Israeli parents, sever ties with Hamas, and take action against the monsters on its payroll.

 

In fact, Hashash can be described as another hostage held by UNRWA. Hashash should be treated by an agency that didn’t participate in the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust. I can’t believe this has to be said.

 

Most aid agencies in the world fall into this category! It’s very easy to find aid groups that didn’t join a pogrom of shocking barbarism. How many aid groups are on video dragging Israeli bodies through the streets? I can think of only one.

 

Usually, when people make the case for UNRWA, they speak in generalities. They point to the nearly 200 schools that UNRWA at one point operated in Gaza. The implication is that Gazans are reliant on the agency for education. The truth is that Gazans aren’t getting education; they are getting—as the children at these schools openly admit—a Sovietesque radicalization against Jews. This brainwashing, in turn, produces another generation of war, and then another and another in perpetuity.

 

The Palestinian child who learns to hate Jews does not benefit from this status quo. The opposite is true. So Hashash isn’t the only UNRWA hostage among Palestinians. There are arguably many thousands of them.

 

Until about 2014, UNRWA was merely an ally of Hamas. But after that, UNRWA practically merged with Hamas. The agency shared space with Hamas all over the enclave.

 

In February, the IDF discovered something shocking. UNRWA’s headquarters in Gaza City sat atop a Hamas data center with sleeping quarters for Hamas commanders. The data center was connected to UNRWA’s own wiring in the building. This was done so that Hamas would be protected from an Israeli airstrike. When I say UNRWA merged with Hamas, I mean it: The only reason UNRWA remained nominally a separate entity was so it could safeguard key Hamas figures and facilities and keep Hamas communication lines open during its war with Israel.

 

We should reject the idea that aid to Palestinians must necessarily come with terrorism and widespread human misery. Keep the dialysis machines, lose the hostage-takers.