There is no more important subplot to the war in Gaza than the corruption of international institutions. Today, the United Nations essentially acknowledged that some of its Gaza-based employees participated in the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks.
The UN also said that it fired employees over their alleged participation in the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust. But this is virtually guaranteed to be the absolute least of what they will find when investigators open up that can of worms.
First, the details. The employees were part of the agency assigned to Palestinian refugees and their descendants, UNRWA. “The Israeli Authorities have provided UNRWA with information about the alleged involvement of several UNRWA employees in the horrific attacks on Israel on 7 October,” reads a statement from UNRWA director Philippe Lazzarini. “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.”
In other words, the agency that exists to perpetuate war against Israel, and thus is disinclined to believe a word the Israelis say, has been given evidence of such a convincing nature that it had to act immediately.
In response, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller announced that the U.S. “has temporarily paused additional funding for UNRWA while we review these allegations and the steps the United Nations is taking to address them.”
Even the European Union was “extremely concerned by allegations of UNRWA staff involvement in the 7th October terrorist attacks in Israel.”
None of this should be terribly surprising. As I wrote a few weeks ago, there is no such thing as an “international” organization in Gaza, because everything becomes an extension of the group once there. The bulk of UNRWA’s money is spent on “education,” and its schools are rife with bald anti-Semitic incitement and grievance farming. UNRWA teachers have been using a Telegram channel to celebrate the Oct. 7 attacks. And at least one Israeli hostage in Gaza has notified authorities that he was held by an UNRWA teacher.
Then there is the revolving door between UNRWA and the International Committee of the Red Cross. Lazzarini, who runs UNRWA now, had previously worked for the ICRC in Gaza. The incoming director of the Red Cross, Pierre Krahenbuhl, spent years running UNRWA during the time when the schools became regular storage centers for Hamas weapons. UNRWA is inseverable from Hamas as long as Hamas rules Gaza, it’s just that simple.
This is not just some random NGO. It’s the United Nations. Also today, the UN’s kangaroo court, the International Court of Justice (sic), denied Israel’s motion to dismiss the current case against Israel at the ICJ: a charge of genocide brought by South Africa. Tomorrow is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, by the way.
Just yesterday, I wrote about the World Health Organization’s hesitation to bring in American infectious disease experts over worries that they’d be seen as pro-Israel. This comes after revelations that freelance journalists, who have worked for high-profile U.S. publications and wire services, rode into battle with Hamas terrorists.
The timing of this disclosure is interesting for another reason. On Tuesday, the House Foreign Affairs Committee is scheduled to hold a hearing titled “UNRWA Exposed: Examining the Agency’s Mission and Failures.” Foundation for Defense of Democracy’s Richard Goldberg and UN Watch’s Hillel Neuer are two of the planned witnesses.
Last night, an administration official told Israel Hayom that “UNRWA continues to deliver critical assistance in Gaza and remains a trusted US partner. UNRWA will be a central pillar of stability in post-war Gaza, and we strongly support it.”
Perhaps that assessment, like U.S. funding to the agency, will come under some much needed reconsideration by the Biden White House. As it is, President Biden had restored U.S. funding to UNRWA after President Trump put a stop to it. Like the removal of the Houthis from the list of foreign terrorist groups, re-funding UNRWA looks to be another case of the president’s desire to undo the vestiges of Trump’s foreign policy without giving thought to whether those policies were correct. That’s a shoddy way for a superpower to act, and it ought to change.
UNRWA is not just corrupt; its existence is a corruption of international laws and norms. It has created its own definition of “refugee” only for Palestinians, because its goal is to keep the conflict unsolved so it can act as a vanguard of the war on the Jewish state. It is a cash conduit to one of the world’s major terrorist groups, which also happens to be an Iranian catspaw. May this be the beginning of a thorough investigation and the end of our complicity in UNRWA’s reign of terror.
