UNRWA is Part of the Problem – Not the Solution

by Bassam Tawil • February 1, 2023 at 5:00 am

The United Nations Relief and Work Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) has once again requested international financial aid. This is the same organization whose workers have been promoting violence and antisemitism on social media.
UNRWA has since done absolutely nothing to help the "refugees" move on with their lives and seek a better future for themselves or their families.
"Almost all of [the incorrectly labeled Palestinians in Gaza] have been born in Gaza, their parents have been born in Gaza, their grandparents have been born in Gaza... they were never displaced an inch. Yet, every day they hear, they learn, and they get an official stamp from the UN agency that says: 'That's not your home. You might have lived here all your life, but your home is there, just across the fence. That's your real home [Israel], and it was taken from you." — Einat Wilf, former Israeli Member of Knesset, December 1, 2015.
The Geneva-based independent human rights group UN Watch has uncovered evidence of UNRWA staff incitement which clearly violate the agency's own rules as well as its proclaimed values of intolerance for racism, discrimination or antisemitism.
Meanwhile, in 2021, the US government confirmed its "failure to ensure that taxpayer aid dollars sent to the Palestinian government did not ultimately make their way to terrorists."
Terrorist groups in Gaza, such as Hamas, have continued to build terror tunnels under UNRWA schools, to use the children as human shields if Israel retaliates after it is attacked -- as Hamas member Abu Khaled, openly admitted in December 2021.
"UNRWA's procurement contracts suggest that funds are already flowing to PFLP affiliates," wrote foreign policy expert Julia Shulman.
"[T]he Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act (PATA).... prohibits assistance to the PA unless the administration certifies that 'no ministry, agency, or instrumentality of the Palestinian Authority is effectively controlled by Hamas'" — Matthew Zweig, Foundation for Defense of Democracies, June 2021.
Commenting on the Biden administration decision to restore the financial aid, UN Watch said that now is the time for the US to demand that "neutrality, accountability and transparency" Secretary Antony Blinken paraded.
It does not seem, however, that UNRWA has taken far-reaching and drastic measures to end the incitement to violence and antisemitism. In fact, it has not taken any at all.
It is clear that UNRWA, like many other UN agencies, has become part of the problem, not part of the solution. Instead of seeking ways to solve the problem of the so-called refugees, UNRWA has perpetuated and inflated it.... Instead of promoting peace and non-violence, UNRWA employees have been doing the reverse.... UNRWA donors might consider these evasions before they sign the next check to one of the UN's most incompetent and corrupt organizations.

The United Nations Relief and Work Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) has once again requested international financial aid. This is the same organization whose workers have been promoting violence and antisemitism on social media. Pictured: A still shot from the documentary film "Camp Jihad," featuring a summer camp in Gaza sponsored and funded by UNWRA. (Image source: Nahum Bedein Center for Near East Policy Research)

On January 24, the agency appealed for $1.6 billion "for programs and operations." UNRWA said it "continues to play an indispensable role in the lives of millions of Palestine refugees," and warned that "compounding challenges over the past year, including underfunding, competing global crises, inflation, disruption in the supply chain, geopolitical dynamics and skyrocketing levels of poverty and unemployment among Palestine refugees have put immense strain on UNRWA."

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Islamic State Jihadists in Afghanistan

by Lawrence A. Franklin • February 1, 2023 at 4:00 am

Despite ideological differences, China and Afghanistan are in the process of forming a transactional relationship based on interests. China most likely is waiting for the Taliban to grant it access to Afghanistan's huge deposits of rare earth materials that America left behind.
It remains to be seen if China decides that, at least for now, a trillion dollars' worth of Afghan mineral deposits might not be worth the risk of being in the midst of terrorist civil war between the Taliban and the Islamic State.

Despite ideological differences, China and Afghanistan are in the process of forming a transactional relationship based on interests. Pictured: Afghanistan's acting first deputy prime minister Abdul Ghani Baradar and China's ambassador to Afghanistan Wang Yu attend a press conference to announce an oil extraction contract with a Chinese company in Kabul on January 5, 2023. (Photo by Ahmad Sahel Arman/AFP via Getty Images)

When two Hellfire missiles last July smashed into the Kabul safehouse that Afghanistan's regime had been providing to Al-Qaeda leader Ayman Zawahiri, thereby killing him, the incident simply underscored the continued strong bonds between the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.

This terrorist alliance, originally forged in the 1990s by the now-deceased leaders of Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, Osama bin Ladin and Mullah Omar, has resisted intense US pressure to break it up. With the departure of NATO and US forces from Afghanistan, jihadists from the Islamic State in Khorasan Province (ISIS-K) have been intensifying their attacks on the Taliban.

Despite ideological differences, China and Afghanistan are in the process of forming a transactional relationship based on interests. China most likely is waiting for the Taliban to grant it access to Afghanistan's huge deposits of rare earth materials that America left behind.

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