Time to End UNRWA's Jihad against Israel

by Bassam Tawil

• "Hamas is involved in everything. Hamas has their hands on UNRWA administration workers. Hamas manages UNRWA. They are those in charge in the agency. From the day Hamas came to power, they took control of everything. The UNRWA employees are from Hamas. The heads of the departments and the senior staff are Hamas members." —Palestinian from the Gaza Strip to an Israeli officer in a recorded call, X (Twitter) December 27, 2023.
• It is now clear that the UN heads were lying when they said they were unaware of the involvement of their employees with terror groups. In fact, they knew but did their utmost to appease Hamas.
• In a moment of rare honesty, in 2021 the UN acknowledged that UNRWA's school curriculum referred to Israel as "the enemy," taught children mathematics by counting "martyred terrorists," and included the phrase "Jihad is one of the doors to paradise" in Arabic grammar lessons.
• "Before UNRWA, this terrorist accomplice [Abdallah Mehjez] worked for the BBC..." — Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch.
• "Now is the time for reform. Reform for rehabilitation - so that the minds of Palestinian children can no longer be poisoned. So that there can be a shared vision of peace in this land." — Lt. Col. (res.) Peter Lerner, X (Twitter), January 27, 2024.
• Western taxpayers should not be funding terror groups disguised as humanitarian organizations.
• UNRWA was established to support the relief and human development of Palestinian refugees, not to support the development of terrorism.
• It is time to dismantle UNRWA and end the farce of Palestinian "refugees." There are no real refugees. There are millions of Palestinians living -- often in unspeakable conditions (so that Israel can be blamed) -- under the control of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, and in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan.
• It is the UN that enables and perpetuates this human rights abuse. These Palestinians live under Palestinian and Arab regimes that should long ago have absorbed them instead of keeping them in "refugee camps" with the cheery "humanitarian" promise that they will one day flood Israel, turn the Jews into a persecuted minority in their own country, then bring about its demise.

It is now clear that the UN heads were lying when they said they were unaware of the involvement of their employees with terror groups. In fact, they knew but did their utmost to appease Hamas. Pictured: UNRWA Commissioner General Philippe Lazzarini speaks at the Global Refugee Forum, in Geneva, Switzerland on December 13, 2023. (Photo by Jean-Guy Python/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)

Philippe Lazzarini, Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), has announced that he decided to fire several employees of his agency after Israeli authorities provided information about their "alleged" involvement in Hamas's massacre of Israelis on October 7, 2023.

"To protect the Agency's ability to deliver humanitarian assistance, I have taken the decision to immediately terminate the contracts of these staff members and launch an investigation in order to establish the truth without delay," Lazzarini said. "Any UNRWA employee who was involved in acts of terror will be held accountable, including through criminal prosecution."

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he was "horrified" by the Israeli accusations.

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