On Friday, David covered the sickening but perhaps not all that surprising news that members of the United Nations agency responsible for aiding Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) had participated in the Hamas terror attack on Israel on October 7. In a pleasantly surprising move, the Biden administration suspended funding to the UNRWA after this news emerged and Israel lodged a public complaint. (Donald Trump had previously suspended all funding to the group, knowing that they supported terrorism.) At least a dozen United Nations contractors participated in the attacks. Their employment has finally been terminated, but it’s unclear what other consequences they may face, if any. But now the UN is back with their hand out, asking for more money to fund the UNRWA, declaring that they’ve done the right thing and now they need to get back to work helping the Palestinians in Gaza. (AP)
The secretary-general of the United Nations on Sunday called on countries to continue funding the main agency providing aid in Gaza after several of its employees were accused of taking part in the Hamas attack on Israel that ignited the war four months ago.
The dispute engulfing the biggest provider of vital aid to Palestinians came as U.S. officials said negotiators were closing in on a cease-fire agreement. The emerging deal would bring a two-month halt to the deadliest-ever Israeli-Palestinian violence, which has stoked instability across the Middle East.
Antonio Guterres warned that the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, would be forced to scale back aid to more than 2 million Palestinians as soon as February. The coastal enclave is in the grip of a severe humanitarian crisis, with a quarter of the population facing starvation.
Given his current precarious political position, I have no doubt that Biden will cave and resume all funding to the United Nations, including the terrorist supporters at the UNRWA. But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be demanding additional answers from the UN. They should deliver a list of all the people who worked for them and took part in the attacks. Where are they now? Are they in the custody of the IDF, and if not, are there any plans to turn them over? They claim that at least one of the twelve is dead. How did that person die? If they were killed in an IDF strike, that’s understandable and justified. If not, explain what happened.
What about the leadership at the UNRWA? Is anyone there, particularly the top people working on the ground in Gaza, being investigated or held accountable? How on earth could you be running a supposed aid organization and not be aware that some of your own workers were in bed with Hamas and participating in the worst terror attack since 9/11, if not of all time? And why should we be expected to immediately forgive and forget and resume funding for the group? The United States is still the biggest funder of the United Nations. That was our money going to pay the people who attacked Israel. This is not the sort of thing that should be simply swept under the rug.
The United Nations is rotten to the core and we’ve known this for a very long time. It’s a globalist organization (literally) that is full of people who hate Israel and seek to undermine the United States even as they continue to take our cash. Meanwhile, they do virtually nothing to hold China accountable for its many atrocities, treating them as a poor “developing nation.” I understand that we have many bigger fish to fry back home at the moment, but this still needs to be a front-and-center issue during this year’s elections. We probably shouldn’t quit the UN entirely because we would lose our veto power on the Security Council. But we should largely if not entirely defund the UN until it reforms some of its corrupt practices. And we should exercise the right to tell the organization that they need to start shopping around for new office space in Europe or elsewhere. Let them handle paying all the bills. Perhaps they should look for some free office space in Beijing. Let’s see how they like the treatment they receive from the Chinese. Or perhaps they could simply relocate to Gaza. They have a lot of connections to Hamas already, apparently, and a lot of Gazans could probably use the employment opportunities.