The Demise of UNRWA Is Long Overdue

The head of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA)—which provides educational and social services to the descendants of Palestinian refugees—recently predicted disaster if the organization is unable to raise $100 million in the next few months. Ruthie Blum explains why this official’s claim that UNRWA “is indispensable in the lives of Palestinian refugees” is simply false:

UNRWA—which was established in December 1949 to assist Arabs who were displaced in 1948 as a result of the Arab assault on the Jewish state that constituted Israel’s War of Independence—is far from being a “humanitarian” organization. It is, rather, a self-serving NGO that reinforces the victimhood and radicalism of the people it’s supposed to be extricating from their circumstances.

Indeed, the organization whose doors and coffers should have been nailed shut decades ago abets terrorists in a number of ways. One is by enabling Fatah, Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad to hide weapons under and inside its schools. . . . Another is through the anti-Semitic content of the textbooks in those schools, whose teachers include Palestinian activists who openly call for violence against Israelis. Such illustrious educators regularly spread vicious lies about the Jewish state on social media. . . . Repeated assurances by UNRWA that it would “investigate” and “deal with” these teachers came to nothing. Naturally.

Bolstering terrorism isn’t the only violation of its mandate that UNRWA has committed, however. No, its misappropriation of millions in American and European tax dollars and euros extends to less lofty ideals than attacking Israel. A damning internal report exposed in July 2019 by Al Jazeera and AFP revealed that then-UNRWA commissioner-general Pierre Krähenbühl and other agency officials were engaging in “sexual misconduct, nepotism, retaliation, discrimination, and other abuses of authority, for personal gain, to suppress legitimate dissent, and to otherwise achieve their personal objectives.”

UNRWA’s demise is long overdue. Let’s pray for its funeral.

Read more at JNS

More about: Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, UNRWA

Why South Africa Has Led the Legal War against Israel

South Africa filed suit with the International Court of Justice in December accusing Israel of genocide. More recently, it requested that the court order the Jewish state to allow humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip—something which, of course, Israel has been doing since the war began. Indeed, the country’s ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC) has had a long history of support for the Palestinian cause, but Orde Kittrie suggests that the current government, which is plagued by massive corruption, has more sinister motives for its fixation on accusing Israel of imagined crimes:

ANC-led South Africa has . . . repeatedly supported Hamas. In 2015 and 2018, the ANC and Hamas signed memoranda of understanding pledging cooperation against Israel. The Daily Maverick, a South African newspaper that previously won an international award for exposing ANC corruption, has reported claims that Iran “essentially paid the ANC to litigate against Israel in the ICJ.”

The ANC-led government says it is motivated by humanitarian principle. That’s contradicted by its support for Russia, and by [President Cyril] Ramaphosa’s warmly welcoming a visit in January by Mohamed Dagalo, the leader of the Sudanese-Arab Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia. Ramaphosa’s smiling, hand-holding welcome of Dagalo occurred two months after the RSF’s systematic massacre of hundreds of non-Arab Sudanese refugees in Darfur.

While the ANC has looted its own country and aided America’s enemies, the U.S. is insulating the party from the consequences of its corruption and mismanagement.

In Kittrie’s view, it is “time for Congress and the Biden administration to start helping South Africa’s people hold Ramaphosa accountable.”

Read more at The Hill

More about: International Law, Iran, South Africa