Last week, the U.S. abstained from a vote at the UN in support of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine (UNRWA), an institution whose primary purpose is to keep Palestinians in a permanent state of dependency, and is deeply entangled with terrorist groups. The resolution also endorsed a Palestinian “right of return,” that is, a right to settle in the Jewish state no matter how its borders are defined. Jonathan Tobin comments:
Compared to the existential threat posed by Iran’s nuclear ambitions and the American desire for a rapprochement with Tehran, talk about a “right of return” that will never happen outside of the ideological fantasy world of the United Nations doesn’t seem too important. And other than some protests about the U.S. abstention from critics of Biden’s policies like the Zionist Organization of America, most of the world seemed to concur with that judgment by largely ignoring it.
But that is a mistake, both on the part of Israel and by many of those Jewish groups who are tasked with advocating for Israel. As with past failures to take on incitement against Israel at the UN Human Rights Council where anti-Semitic initiatives are just business as usual, the problem with ignoring UNRWA is that it’s not just a matter of empty talk from extremists who want to destroy the Jewish state. Letting the “apartheid Israel” lies promoted at UN forums since the infamous 2001 Durban “anti-racism” conference go unanswered has led to those canards being accepted throughout the world in academic circles and political forums, proving that ignoring UNRWA comes with a cost.
Funding for UNRWA, therefore, is not so much help for stateless people as it is ensuring that they remain without permanent homes so that the war on Israel can go on. UNRWA facilities and schools are incubators not just for Palestinian irredentism but also of hate for Jews and Israelis, not to mention material assistance for terrorists like those of Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
Read more on JNS: https://www.jns.org/opinion/bidens-neutrality-on-infrastructure-of-the-war-against-israel/