Original article
By Joseph Klein
FrontPageMagazine.com | Monday, February 09, 2009
In a rare admission of Hamas’ wrong-doing, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (“UNRWA”) promptly condemned Hamas in a sternly worded press release for seizing its humanitarian supplies by force on February 3, 2009. For once, UNRWA did not deem it necessary, in the name of moral equivalency, to attack Israel at the same time.
The UN Secretary General’s deputy spokesperson Marie Okabe reinforced UNRWA’s condemnation of Hamas by essentially paraphrasing its press release at a briefing held on February 4th at UN headquarters that I attended. I looked around at other peoples’ faces in the briefing room and some appeared as surprised as I was that, for the first time, we were witnessing UNRWA and the Secretary General’s office actually criticizing Hamas alone in such strong terms. However, the matter-of-factness with which the Secretary General’s deputy spokesperson read her statement – as opposed to the anger we always hear from UN spokespersons whenever Israel is criticized – conveyed a rather nonchalant attitude toward the whole thing as if it were an unfortunate but isolated event. Of course it is anything but.
The incident that brought this development about involved the confiscation of over 3500 blankets and 406 food parcels by police affiliated with Hamas, who broke into an UNRWA warehouse in the Shatti beach refugee camp and seized the aid supplies by force. The supplies were to be distributed by UNRWA to five hundred families in Gaza. The confiscation took place after UNRWA staff had earlier refused to accede to Hamas’ demand and hand over the aid supplies to the Hamas-run Ministry of Social Affairs. The reason for the refusal, UNRWA said, was to ensure that the assistance would actually reach the intended beneficiaries.
At the request of reporters attending Ms. Okabe's briefing, a follow-up press conference was set up at UN headquarters via video link the next day with John Ging, UNRWA’s Director of Operations in Gaza. Ging acknowledged that Hamas's seizure of UNRWA aid supplies was only making matters worse, saying that the incident had “crossed a red line”. However, he blamed it on "the reckless acts of a few", as if the ruling Hamas terrorist group were a reasonable organization that had temporarily lost control of a few hotheads. Ironically, not long after Ging was briefing reporters about the first incident, Hamas struck again. It seized 10 truckloads of flour and rice that had been delivered into Gaza, leading UNRWA to suspend all further aid shipments into Gaza until the Hamas government returns the stolen supplies and provides credible assurances that such thefts will end.
Just days before Hamas’ criminal seizure of UNRWA supplies, the United Nations had launched an international appeal for $613 million to help in Gaza recovery efforts. "With the help of this $613 million appeal, the United Nations and other aid agencies can jump into action to help the 1.4 million civilians in the Gaza Strip to recover," Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told a news conference on the situation in Gaza, speaking from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Unfortunately, the Secretary General’s deputy spokesperson was either unable or unwilling to acknowledge a connection between Hamas’ forceful assertion of control over the disposition of UNRWA aid supplies and concern over what Hamas would be likely to do in order to get its hands on the UN-raised Gaza aid money. She ducked a question at the press briefing on this very point.
The concern is not hypothetical. Hamas officials in the Gaza Strip and Syria have warned the international community against channeling funds intended for Gaza reconstruction projects through the Palestinian Authority. "Don't give the money to Ramallah," said Moussa Abu Marzouk, deputy chairman of the Hamas political bureau.
Hamas wants total control over all aid – supplies and money - in order to enhance its claims to legitimacy and to bestow favors to its supporters in Gaza while depriving its enemies of any assistance.
Hamas has no interest in relieving the suffering of the civilians under its rule. In fact, Hamas prevented its own people from reaching lsraeli medical facilities set up just outside Gaza. It has regularly intercepted humanitarian convoys and stolen food items that had been donated for free distribution to needy Gazans. Instead, they were sold in the black market. After using Palestinian civilians as human shields during the conflict with Israel, Hamas is now stealing aid intended for suffering women and children whose images Hamas wants to continue using for propaganda purposes.
A Fatah official denounced Hamas last month as a "black and bloody militia" that was responsible for the "catastrophe" in the Gaza Strip, as reported in the Jerusalem Post. This was a Palestinian speaking, not an Israeli citizen. The Fatah official, who wished to remain anonymous out of fear of reprisal, would like to see Hamas leaders Mahmoud Zahar and Ismail Haniyeh tried before a Palestinian court as "war criminals." The Hamas leaders, he charged, were responsible for the death of hundreds of innocent Palestinians. "Ever since they came to power, they brought death and destruction to our people."[1]
When Hamas’ Palestinian brethren can connect the dots and see through Hamas’ exploitation of its own people, it is time for the United Nations to consider Hamas’ criminal seizure of UNRWA aid supplies as a wake-up call. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon must do everything possible to ensure that not a cent of money the UN raises for humanitarian aid and reconstruction in Gaza goes to Hamas or to any of its front organizations. Otherwise, it will not be long before the Secretary General’s spokesperson may have to read a statement during a press briefing about Hamas’ theft of hundreds of millions of dollars from the Palestinian people.
Notes:
[1] The Jerusalem Post (January 12, 2009)
_________________________________________________
Joseph A. Klein is the author of Global Deception: The UN’s Stealth Assault on America’s Freedom.
Showing posts with label UNRWA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label UNRWA. Show all posts
Monday, February 9, 2009
Saturday, February 7, 2009
UNRWA suspends Gaza aid after Hamas steals food and supplies
Original article
By Haaretz Service and The Associated Press
Last update - 17:27 06/02/2009
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) on Friday said it is suspending humanitarian aid in Gaza until further notice, after Hamas seized control of its warehouses and stole 200 tons of food and supplies.
The agency said it made the decision after Hamas personnel seized an aid shipment on Thursday. Earlier this week, Hamas police took thousands of blankets and food parcels meant for needy residents.
In a statement, UNRWA said 10 truckloads of flour and rice that had been
d
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elivered into Gaza on Thursday were taken away by trucks affiliated with the Hamas-run Ministry of Social Affairs. Earlier this week, Hamas police took thousands of blankets and food parcels meant for needy residents.\
UNRWA said the suspension would remain in effect until the aid is returned and the agency receives credible assurances from the Hamas government that such thefts will end. There was no immediate reaction from Hamas.
UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness said the agency would continue to distribute aid from its existing supplies in Gaza, but that stocks were running thin.
"There is enough aid for days, not weeks," he said. Complicating the situation, he said the agency has not been able to import plastic bags used for food distribution, and that existing supplies will run out early next week.
Some 80 percent of Gaza's 1.4 million people rely on the UN agency for food and other support, and UN officials say the need for aid has increased since Israel ended a military offensive in Gaza last month.
A UN spokesman on Wednesday said Hamas police in Gaza broke into a warehouse full of UN humanitarian supplies and seized thousands of blankets and food packages, creating a rare public clash between the international agency that feeds much of the territory and the militant group that rules it.
The incident highlighted difficulties facing donors seeking to bypass Hamas while helping Gazans survive and rebuild after Israel's three-week military offensive.
"Hamas policemen stormed into an aid warehouse in Gaza City Tuesday evening and confiscated 3,500 blankets and over 400 food parcels ready for distribution to 500 families," said UNRWA spokesman Christopher Gunness on Wednesday.
"They were armed, they seized this, they took it by force," Gunness said, terming the incident absolutely unacceptable.
Police seized the aid after UNRWA officials refused to voluntarily hand it over to the Hamas-run Ministry of Social Affairs, he said. Similar aid packages were distributed to 70,000 residents over the past two weeks, Gunness said.
Ahmad Kurd, the Hamas official in charge of the ministry, did not deny the aid was seized. Other Hamas officials defended their actions.
Hamas spokesman Taher Nunu demanded an apology and said UNRWA was spreading false news. Ihab Ghussein, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry, said the incident occurred because the UN was storing the blankets in an area not authorized to be distributed.
In Gaza, Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum called UNRWA's decision unjustified.
He said Hamas supports UNRWA's work, but believes that some of the agency's employees were giving aid to groups attached to rival political parties.
"We as Hamas refuse all use of the people's needs for political ends," he said. "He called on UNRWA to put an end to using aid for political means, and to distribute it to all the needy equally."
UN officials said the aid was kept in a local storage facility because the organization's regular warehouses were full. The UN, human rights groups and Palestinians have often complained that a blockade by Israel and Egypt has left Gaza critically short of vital supplies.
Gaza residents are facing more hardship since Israel's devastating three-week military offensive, which ended Jan. 18. The operation, aimed at halting rocket fire by Palestinian militants, killed 1,300 including hundreds of civilians and left thousands destitute after their homes were damaged or destroyed.
Kurd said the Hamas government had already distributed $50 million in emergency relief to residents and promised additional payments for hardship cases.
Gunness said this was the first time Hamas seized UNRWA supplies. "Does anyone really think that the Americans, who are our single largest donor, or the Europeans, who are our largest multination donor, would give us aid in the generous way they do if they thought that aid would go to terrorists?" Gunness asked.
The West Bank-based government of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, a fierce rival of Hamas, was also planning to send $600 million in aid, hoping to earn the loyalty of Gaza residents. Hamas expelled forces loyal to Abbas when it overran Gaza in 2007.
Egypt is to host an international conference in coordination with Abbas's Palestinian Authority on March 2 on Gaza reconstruction, whose cost has been estimated at $2 billion. Saudi Arabia has said it would donate e1 billion.
Last week, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit urged Europe to help with fast aid for the Gaza Strip, saying the reconstruction meeting would require damage assessments and the support of the European Union, the United Nations and others.
By Haaretz Service and The Associated Press
Last update - 17:27 06/02/2009
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) on Friday said it is suspending humanitarian aid in Gaza until further notice, after Hamas seized control of its warehouses and stole 200 tons of food and supplies.
The agency said it made the decision after Hamas personnel seized an aid shipment on Thursday. Earlier this week, Hamas police took thousands of blankets and food parcels meant for needy residents.
In a statement, UNRWA said 10 truckloads of flour and rice that had been
d
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elivered into Gaza on Thursday were taken away by trucks affiliated with the Hamas-run Ministry of Social Affairs. Earlier this week, Hamas police took thousands of blankets and food parcels meant for needy residents.\
UNRWA said the suspension would remain in effect until the aid is returned and the agency receives credible assurances from the Hamas government that such thefts will end. There was no immediate reaction from Hamas.
UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness said the agency would continue to distribute aid from its existing supplies in Gaza, but that stocks were running thin.
"There is enough aid for days, not weeks," he said. Complicating the situation, he said the agency has not been able to import plastic bags used for food distribution, and that existing supplies will run out early next week.
Some 80 percent of Gaza's 1.4 million people rely on the UN agency for food and other support, and UN officials say the need for aid has increased since Israel ended a military offensive in Gaza last month.
A UN spokesman on Wednesday said Hamas police in Gaza broke into a warehouse full of UN humanitarian supplies and seized thousands of blankets and food packages, creating a rare public clash between the international agency that feeds much of the territory and the militant group that rules it.
The incident highlighted difficulties facing donors seeking to bypass Hamas while helping Gazans survive and rebuild after Israel's three-week military offensive.
"Hamas policemen stormed into an aid warehouse in Gaza City Tuesday evening and confiscated 3,500 blankets and over 400 food parcels ready for distribution to 500 families," said UNRWA spokesman Christopher Gunness on Wednesday.
"They were armed, they seized this, they took it by force," Gunness said, terming the incident absolutely unacceptable.
Police seized the aid after UNRWA officials refused to voluntarily hand it over to the Hamas-run Ministry of Social Affairs, he said. Similar aid packages were distributed to 70,000 residents over the past two weeks, Gunness said.
Ahmad Kurd, the Hamas official in charge of the ministry, did not deny the aid was seized. Other Hamas officials defended their actions.
Hamas spokesman Taher Nunu demanded an apology and said UNRWA was spreading false news. Ihab Ghussein, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry, said the incident occurred because the UN was storing the blankets in an area not authorized to be distributed.
In Gaza, Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum called UNRWA's decision unjustified.
He said Hamas supports UNRWA's work, but believes that some of the agency's employees were giving aid to groups attached to rival political parties.
"We as Hamas refuse all use of the people's needs for political ends," he said. "He called on UNRWA to put an end to using aid for political means, and to distribute it to all the needy equally."
UN officials said the aid was kept in a local storage facility because the organization's regular warehouses were full. The UN, human rights groups and Palestinians have often complained that a blockade by Israel and Egypt has left Gaza critically short of vital supplies.
Gaza residents are facing more hardship since Israel's devastating three-week military offensive, which ended Jan. 18. The operation, aimed at halting rocket fire by Palestinian militants, killed 1,300 including hundreds of civilians and left thousands destitute after their homes were damaged or destroyed.
Kurd said the Hamas government had already distributed $50 million in emergency relief to residents and promised additional payments for hardship cases.
Gunness said this was the first time Hamas seized UNRWA supplies. "Does anyone really think that the Americans, who are our single largest donor, or the Europeans, who are our largest multination donor, would give us aid in the generous way they do if they thought that aid would go to terrorists?" Gunness asked.
The West Bank-based government of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, a fierce rival of Hamas, was also planning to send $600 million in aid, hoping to earn the loyalty of Gaza residents. Hamas expelled forces loyal to Abbas when it overran Gaza in 2007.
Egypt is to host an international conference in coordination with Abbas's Palestinian Authority on March 2 on Gaza reconstruction, whose cost has been estimated at $2 billion. Saudi Arabia has said it would donate e1 billion.
Last week, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit urged Europe to help with fast aid for the Gaza Strip, saying the reconstruction meeting would require damage assessments and the support of the European Union, the United Nations and others.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
UNRWA staff not tested for terror ties
Original article
The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees does little to check whether its staff or clients are terrorists, its former chief attorney, James Lindsay, says in a newly published report.
Allegations linking terrorists to UNRWA are not new. Israel has said many times its troops were fired on by gunmen using UNRWA facilities, that UNRWA vehicles transported weapons and that some of its staff members were terrorists.
UNRWA has denied those charges and Israel has often retracted them or found them hard to prove.
This latest claim against UNRWA, contained in a 67-page critique of the organization published at the end of January by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, has more authority behind it, because Lindsay was a senior lawyer for UNRWA from 2000 to 2007.
The issue, Lindsay wrote, is not intention but oversight.
"UNRWA has taken very few steps to detect and eliminate terrorists from the ranks of its staff or its beneficiaries, and no steps at all to prevent members of terrorist organizations such as Hamas from joining its staff," he wrote.
"These failings have occurred not because UNRWA consciously supports terrorism but rather because it is not particularly concerned about the issue. Its main focus [is] the provision of services and protection of Palestinian refugees," he wrote.
UNRWA's Jerusalem spokesman Chris Gunness said in response that his organization had "a rigorous approach to ensuring that its staff are not involved in militant or political activity" and that it took the matter very seriously.
Lindsay wrote that UNRWA did not have the means to ensure there was no terrorism in its midst.
"Even if terrorism constituted a greater concern, the agency is not equipped to undertake the extensive security investigations that a thoroughgoing anti-terrorism effort would require," he said.
Lindsay cited examples of past charges against UNRWA staff, including a 2002 UNRWA driver who was accused - but never charged - with carrying weapons in an ambulance and a Gaza headmaster employed by UNRWA who was also an explosives experts for Islamic Jihad. The headmaster was killed by Israel last year.
UNRWA has no preemployment security checks and does not monitor off-time behavior to ensure compliance with the organization's anti-terrorist rules, Lindsay wrote.
"Evidence of area staff members who have had second jobs with Hamas or with other terrorist groups does occasionally come to light," he wrote.
Even so, Lindsay noted, of the 5,000 UNRWA staff who worked in the West Bank and the 10,000 in the Gaza Strip, most of whom were Palestinians, few had been convicted of terrorism-related charges.
Staff members, however, had been involved in political activity, wrote Lindsay. In particular he quoted the organization's past commissioner-general Peter Hansen, who in 2004 said, "I am sure there are Hamas members on the UNRWA payroll and I don't see that as a crime. Hamas as a political organization does not mean that every member is a militant and we do not do political vetting and exclude people from one persuasion as against another."
UNRWA has said in response that its staff were prohibited from any political involvement.
The bulk of Lindsay's report, however, focused on operational suggestions to de-politicize and change the organization's mission and to cut down on its list of 4.5 million refugees.
UNRWA was created in 1949 by General Assembly Resolution 302 and began operation in May 1950 to service what at the time was 957,000 refugees in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, many of whom been rendered homeless or jobless by the 1948-49 war with Israel, according to Lindsay.
That number was higher than the initial UN list of 726,000 refugees recorded in the immediate aftermath of the war, he wrote.
Initially, UNRWA provided immediate relief with an aim to integrate the refugees into their host countries.
Both the refugees and the Arab states opposed the idea of integration. By the late 1950s it had been disregarded in favor of servicing the refugees, including offering developmental services in areas such as education, health, welfare, microfinance and urban planning.
UNRWA also expanded its definition of a refugee to include those patrilineal descendants of the original refugees.
Since the 1970s, more than half of the organization's budget has gone to education. In 2007, for example, $282 million of UNRWA's $545m. budget went to educate 480,000 children, according to Lindsay.
Similarly, 21,962 of its 29,000 staff members work in UNRWA schools. Fifteen percent to 20% of its budget goes to health services, for which $106m. was earmarked in the 2007 budget.
But not all those serviced by UNRWA need the organization, Lindsay wrote in his study, particularly given that a majority of them have been resettled.
In Jordan, where 2 million Palestinian refugees live, all but 167,000 have citizenship, and are fully eligible for government services including education and health care.
To continue to call citizens of recognized states refugees is suspect and suggests "that the agency's continued existence is due at least in part to political purposes" even though UNRWA was not designed as a political organization, Lindsay said.
Eliminating UNRWA services in Jordan to all but the 167,000 noncitizens could reduce its refugee list by 40%, Lindsay said.
In deciding to whom UNRWA provides services, it assesses "refugee status," not need, he wrote.
Some recipients of aid could afford to pay for the services they now received for free, he wrote.
The decision to allow for a growing refugee population had become a political statement that fostered and supported the Palestinian demand to return to Israel, he wrote.
UNRWA, he said, did this even though the United States, its largest single donor, did not support the right of Palestinian return to within Israel's pre-1967 border.
While some critics have demanded that the organization be disbanded, Lindsay called for it to be reformed. UNRWA's programs, he said, had insured that the population it serviced did not suffer from lack of basic needs.
The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees does little to check whether its staff or clients are terrorists, its former chief attorney, James Lindsay, says in a newly published report.
Allegations linking terrorists to UNRWA are not new. Israel has said many times its troops were fired on by gunmen using UNRWA facilities, that UNRWA vehicles transported weapons and that some of its staff members were terrorists.
UNRWA has denied those charges and Israel has often retracted them or found them hard to prove.
This latest claim against UNRWA, contained in a 67-page critique of the organization published at the end of January by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, has more authority behind it, because Lindsay was a senior lawyer for UNRWA from 2000 to 2007.
The issue, Lindsay wrote, is not intention but oversight.
"UNRWA has taken very few steps to detect and eliminate terrorists from the ranks of its staff or its beneficiaries, and no steps at all to prevent members of terrorist organizations such as Hamas from joining its staff," he wrote.
"These failings have occurred not because UNRWA consciously supports terrorism but rather because it is not particularly concerned about the issue. Its main focus [is] the provision of services and protection of Palestinian refugees," he wrote.
UNRWA's Jerusalem spokesman Chris Gunness said in response that his organization had "a rigorous approach to ensuring that its staff are not involved in militant or political activity" and that it took the matter very seriously.
Lindsay wrote that UNRWA did not have the means to ensure there was no terrorism in its midst.
"Even if terrorism constituted a greater concern, the agency is not equipped to undertake the extensive security investigations that a thoroughgoing anti-terrorism effort would require," he said.
Lindsay cited examples of past charges against UNRWA staff, including a 2002 UNRWA driver who was accused - but never charged - with carrying weapons in an ambulance and a Gaza headmaster employed by UNRWA who was also an explosives experts for Islamic Jihad. The headmaster was killed by Israel last year.
UNRWA has no preemployment security checks and does not monitor off-time behavior to ensure compliance with the organization's anti-terrorist rules, Lindsay wrote.
"Evidence of area staff members who have had second jobs with Hamas or with other terrorist groups does occasionally come to light," he wrote.
Even so, Lindsay noted, of the 5,000 UNRWA staff who worked in the West Bank and the 10,000 in the Gaza Strip, most of whom were Palestinians, few had been convicted of terrorism-related charges.
Staff members, however, had been involved in political activity, wrote Lindsay. In particular he quoted the organization's past commissioner-general Peter Hansen, who in 2004 said, "I am sure there are Hamas members on the UNRWA payroll and I don't see that as a crime. Hamas as a political organization does not mean that every member is a militant and we do not do political vetting and exclude people from one persuasion as against another."
UNRWA has said in response that its staff were prohibited from any political involvement.
The bulk of Lindsay's report, however, focused on operational suggestions to de-politicize and change the organization's mission and to cut down on its list of 4.5 million refugees.
UNRWA was created in 1949 by General Assembly Resolution 302 and began operation in May 1950 to service what at the time was 957,000 refugees in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, many of whom been rendered homeless or jobless by the 1948-49 war with Israel, according to Lindsay.
That number was higher than the initial UN list of 726,000 refugees recorded in the immediate aftermath of the war, he wrote.
Initially, UNRWA provided immediate relief with an aim to integrate the refugees into their host countries.
Both the refugees and the Arab states opposed the idea of integration. By the late 1950s it had been disregarded in favor of servicing the refugees, including offering developmental services in areas such as education, health, welfare, microfinance and urban planning.
UNRWA also expanded its definition of a refugee to include those patrilineal descendants of the original refugees.
Since the 1970s, more than half of the organization's budget has gone to education. In 2007, for example, $282 million of UNRWA's $545m. budget went to educate 480,000 children, according to Lindsay.
Similarly, 21,962 of its 29,000 staff members work in UNRWA schools. Fifteen percent to 20% of its budget goes to health services, for which $106m. was earmarked in the 2007 budget.
But not all those serviced by UNRWA need the organization, Lindsay wrote in his study, particularly given that a majority of them have been resettled.
In Jordan, where 2 million Palestinian refugees live, all but 167,000 have citizenship, and are fully eligible for government services including education and health care.
To continue to call citizens of recognized states refugees is suspect and suggests "that the agency's continued existence is due at least in part to political purposes" even though UNRWA was not designed as a political organization, Lindsay said.
Eliminating UNRWA services in Jordan to all but the 167,000 noncitizens could reduce its refugee list by 40%, Lindsay said.
In deciding to whom UNRWA provides services, it assesses "refugee status," not need, he wrote.
Some recipients of aid could afford to pay for the services they now received for free, he wrote.
The decision to allow for a growing refugee population had become a political statement that fostered and supported the Palestinian demand to return to Israel, he wrote.
UNRWA, he said, did this even though the United States, its largest single donor, did not support the right of Palestinian return to within Israel's pre-1967 border.
While some critics have demanded that the organization be disbanded, Lindsay called for it to be reformed. UNRWA's programs, he said, had insured that the population it serviced did not suffer from lack of basic needs.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Report: UNRWA pays terrorists
In sharply worded report, former legal advisor to UN agency says group must redefine oxymoronic labeling of Palestinians with Jordanian, Lebanese citizenship as refugees
Original article
by Yitzhak Benhorin
Published: 01.28.09, 00:51 / Israel News
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees employs and provides benefits for terrorists and criminals, asserts a former legal adviser to UNRWA who left the organization in 2007. James Lindsay, now a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, served as an attorney with the US Justice Department for two decades before leaving to work for UNRWA in 2000.
Titled 'Fixing UNRWA: Repairing the UN's Troubled System of Aid to Palestinian Refugees,' Lindsay's report puts forward suggestions intended to improve the agency. Established by the US and Britain after the 1948 war, UNRWA's objective was to aid displaced Palestinians.
Lindsay writes that although the US remains UNRWA's main contributor, the agency's positions contrast with Washington's.
During the recent fighting in Gaza a number of UNRWA institutions were bombed by the IDF, which claimed that terrorists had fired at forces from within or near the UN compounds. The agency's employees took a clear-cut stance against Israel during the war.
Lindsay's report warns that the agency has deteriorated increasingly over the years since its establishment, and that it was currently offering services to those who were not actually in need of them. "No justification exists for millions of dollars in humanitarian aid going to those who can afford to pay for UNRWA services," the report says.
He suggests UNRWA make operational changes and "halt its one-sided political statements and limit itself to comments on humanitarian issues; take additional steps to ensure the agency is not employing or providing benefits to terrorists and criminals; and allow the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), or some other neutral entity, to provide balanced and discrimination-free textbooks for UNRWA initiatives."
Lindsay concludes his report by saying that only these changes would allow the agency to complete its task in the Middle East. "For the Palestinians it serves, this means ending their refugee status and returning, after nearly sixty years, to what most of them so desperately seek: normal lives," he writes.
The report will be handed over to US President Barack Obama's administration, which is keen to help fix the ailing agency.
"The United States, despite funding nearly 75 percent of UNRWA’s initial budget and remaining its largest single country donor, has largely failed to make UNRWA reflect US foreign policy objectives. UNRWA initially served US humanitarian purposes, but in later years often clashed with US policies," the report says.
Lindsay claims the most important change that should be made in the agency is "the removal of citizens from recognized states – persons who have the oxymoronic status of “citizen refugees” – from UNRWA’s jurisdiction. This would apply to the vast majority of Palestinian “refugees” in Jordan, as well as to some in Lebanon and Syria."
Original article
by Yitzhak Benhorin
Published: 01.28.09, 00:51 / Israel News
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees employs and provides benefits for terrorists and criminals, asserts a former legal adviser to UNRWA who left the organization in 2007. James Lindsay, now a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, served as an attorney with the US Justice Department for two decades before leaving to work for UNRWA in 2000.
Titled 'Fixing UNRWA: Repairing the UN's Troubled System of Aid to Palestinian Refugees,' Lindsay's report puts forward suggestions intended to improve the agency. Established by the US and Britain after the 1948 war, UNRWA's objective was to aid displaced Palestinians.
Lindsay writes that although the US remains UNRWA's main contributor, the agency's positions contrast with Washington's.
During the recent fighting in Gaza a number of UNRWA institutions were bombed by the IDF, which claimed that terrorists had fired at forces from within or near the UN compounds. The agency's employees took a clear-cut stance against Israel during the war.
Lindsay's report warns that the agency has deteriorated increasingly over the years since its establishment, and that it was currently offering services to those who were not actually in need of them. "No justification exists for millions of dollars in humanitarian aid going to those who can afford to pay for UNRWA services," the report says.
He suggests UNRWA make operational changes and "halt its one-sided political statements and limit itself to comments on humanitarian issues; take additional steps to ensure the agency is not employing or providing benefits to terrorists and criminals; and allow the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), or some other neutral entity, to provide balanced and discrimination-free textbooks for UNRWA initiatives."
Lindsay concludes his report by saying that only these changes would allow the agency to complete its task in the Middle East. "For the Palestinians it serves, this means ending their refugee status and returning, after nearly sixty years, to what most of them so desperately seek: normal lives," he writes.
The report will be handed over to US President Barack Obama's administration, which is keen to help fix the ailing agency.
"The United States, despite funding nearly 75 percent of UNRWA’s initial budget and remaining its largest single country donor, has largely failed to make UNRWA reflect US foreign policy objectives. UNRWA initially served US humanitarian purposes, but in later years often clashed with US policies," the report says.
Lindsay claims the most important change that should be made in the agency is "the removal of citizens from recognized states – persons who have the oxymoronic status of “citizen refugees” – from UNRWA’s jurisdiction. This would apply to the vast majority of Palestinian “refugees” in Jordan, as well as to some in Lebanon and Syria."
Monday, January 26, 2009
How Many Gazans Really Died in the War?
Reports are coming out that show Hamas vastly inflated the number of civilian dead.
Original article
January 24, 2009 - by Mike McNally
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When Israel launched Operation Defensive Shield in 2002, I was working for a newspaper in the west of England, and one of my jobs was editing the page or two of foreign news we carried each day. When reports of a “massacre” in a town called Jenin started appearing on the wire services one afternoon, I was skeptical. The claims by anonymous Palestinians of Israeli soldiers lining civilians up against walls and shooting them not only didn’t ring true, they reeked of propaganda.
Claim and counterclaim are part of the “fog” of any conflict, but I felt my paper shouldn’t publish accusations so serious — and so inflammatory — without at least a modicum of independent corroboration. I relayed my concerns to the deputy editor, who took a less skeptical view of the massacre claims. “Run it,” he said. “Those ****ing Israelis, they think they can do what they like.”
I didn’t run it — at least not the version he wanted me to. I left in the facts as they were known, including reports of IDF troops causing civilian casualties, but I excised the more outrageous claims against the Israelis, including all references to a “massacre.” I didn’t see what I was doing as necessarily pro-Israel. I guess I was just clinging to the quaint notion that my paper should stick to reporting the facts.
When, some time later, it emerged that there had indeed been no massacre in Jenin (the Palestinians claimed that first thousands, then hundreds had died; the final estimate by the UN was 55, including “a number” of civilians [see point No. 4 under Annex IV of its official report]), I felt vindicated and pleased that I hadn’t contributed to the orgy of hatred directed at Israel over a “war crime” that never happened.
Unfortunately for Israel, editors at supposedly reputable news organizations around the world with immeasurably more influence than my small paper, including CNN and the BBC, were less circumspect in reporting the false allegations. (The behavior of the British press was especially disgraceful, as Tom Gross wrote at the time for National Review). In this case the lie got not halfway, but the whole way around the world before the truth got its boots on, and it’s a lie that’s still widely believed to this day.
Clearly unchastened by the Jenin experience, the world’s media has been reporting with a similar lack of skepticism on the casualty figures coming out of Gaza in recent days. Most outlets are reporting a figure of 1,200-1,300 Palestinian dead, while omitting Israeli claims that two-thirds of this number were Hamas fighters. The BBC, maintaining its inglorious record of covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, is also reporting as fact that 400 children were killed, with no evidence to support that figure. This is the same BBC that continues to report that “most” of the 1,000 or so Lebanese killed by Israel in the 2006 war were civilians, in the face of reports from multiple sources that perhaps half the dead were Hezbollah fighters.
Now the first serious challenge to these figures has emerged, in a story in the Italian newpaper Corriere della Sera that has been widely reported by the Israeli press — including here, here and here — but so far mostly ignored by the world’s media. Journalist Lorenzo Cremonesi quotes Palestinian medical staff as saying that no more than 500 or 600 Palestinians died, most of them young men. He says he visited several of the major hospitals in Gaza and found large numbers of empty beds. Cremonesi — who knows his way around Gaza, and was briefly kidnapped there in 2005 — also relates Palestinian accounts of Hamas using civilians as human shields, firing from UN facilities, and commandeering ambulances to avoid being targeted by Israeli forces.
Clearly the numbers don’t add up, so who should we believe? Cremonesi’s report is persuasive — particularly the account of the empty beds — but stands alone among reports from Gaza. And even if there was something approaching unanimity on the total number of dead, disagreements will remain as to how many were combatants and how many were civilians.The IDF and the Red Cross are carrying out detailed investigations into casualty numbers. While the Israeli military has clearly killed civilians, it says most of those deaths were unavoidable and the consequence of attacks on legitimate targets. It should also be noted that the IDF is investigating allegations of war crimes, and its troops are subject to the full force of the law.
Hamas, by contrast, clearly bears responsibility for many of the civilian deaths, and clearly has an interest in inflating the numbers. And don’t hold your breath waiting for Hamas to launch investigations into claims that its fighters stole food and medical supplies, and tortured and killed members of the rival Fatah organization.
There’s very little coming out of Gaza in the way of impartial accounts, and it’s worth bearing in mind that the sources inside the territory on which the media is largely relying are far from neutral. What the media disingenuously describes as “Palestinian” sources are, in fact, Hamas sources. Hamas controls everything in Gaza, including the hospitals.
Then there are the supposedly neutral foreign relief and medical workers, such as Norwegian doctor Mads Gilbert, who in between ward rounds was doing the rounds on CNN, the BBC, and elsewhere, where he was portrayed as something close to a Mother Teresa figure. Little Green Footballs and other bloggers have reported how Gilberts, an acknowledged supporter of terrorism, took part in an apparently staged video purporting to show the death of a Gazan child. He isn’t just some Hawkeye Pierce figure, railing against the futility of war: he’s a regular Che Guevara, throwing his lot in with the killers in Hamas to further his anti-Semitic and anti-Western agenda.
Sadly, the UN is not neutral in Gaza either. UNRWA, which is responsible for Palestinian refugees, is part of the fabric of Gazan society. It employs thousands of Palestinians, and operates, like every relief agency, under the writ of Hamas. Some of its international staff are no doubt simply toeing the Hamas line so that that they can help the people of Gaza, but others, in line with semi-official UN policy, are clearly sympathetic to the Palestinian cause and hostile toward Israel.
And so we come back to the mainstream media, through which the accounts from sources on both sides of the conflict are filtered. And the media has shown time and again that, thanks to a heady mix of stupidity, gullibility, and bias, it can’t be trusted to report the facts accurately. I’ve yet to see a piece in the MSM recalling the “lessons of Jenin,” and cautioning against jumping to conclusions over Gaza.
The truth about what happened in Jenin is known to a relatively small group of people — serious observers of Middle East politics, Israelis, and supporters of Israel who make it their business to stay informed. Others — Arab regimes and their apologists in the media and academia — know the truth but choose to conceal it or actively lie. Most non-partisan people still believe there was a massacre, because it was widely reported on TV and on the front pages of newspapers and websites around the world, while the truth leaked out slowly, months afterwards and far from the headlines.
Ultimately, people will believe what they want to believe about who died in Gaza, and how they died. Opponents of Israel will refuse to accept that most of those killed were lawfully-targeted combatants, or that most of the civilian dead were the victims of Hamas’ actions. Similarly, supporters of Israel find it hard to believe that its troops may have killed innocent people unnecessarily. But the media has a responsibility to give the same prominence to the claims of the Israeli government as it does to the claims of terrorist propagandists, and to report on accounts, such as Lorenzo Cremonesi’s, that run counter to the established narrative. So far, predictably, it’s failing miserably on both scores.
Original article
January 24, 2009 - by Mike McNally
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When Israel launched Operation Defensive Shield in 2002, I was working for a newspaper in the west of England, and one of my jobs was editing the page or two of foreign news we carried each day. When reports of a “massacre” in a town called Jenin started appearing on the wire services one afternoon, I was skeptical. The claims by anonymous Palestinians of Israeli soldiers lining civilians up against walls and shooting them not only didn’t ring true, they reeked of propaganda.
Claim and counterclaim are part of the “fog” of any conflict, but I felt my paper shouldn’t publish accusations so serious — and so inflammatory — without at least a modicum of independent corroboration. I relayed my concerns to the deputy editor, who took a less skeptical view of the massacre claims. “Run it,” he said. “Those ****ing Israelis, they think they can do what they like.”
I didn’t run it — at least not the version he wanted me to. I left in the facts as they were known, including reports of IDF troops causing civilian casualties, but I excised the more outrageous claims against the Israelis, including all references to a “massacre.” I didn’t see what I was doing as necessarily pro-Israel. I guess I was just clinging to the quaint notion that my paper should stick to reporting the facts.
When, some time later, it emerged that there had indeed been no massacre in Jenin (the Palestinians claimed that first thousands, then hundreds had died; the final estimate by the UN was 55, including “a number” of civilians [see point No. 4 under Annex IV of its official report]), I felt vindicated and pleased that I hadn’t contributed to the orgy of hatred directed at Israel over a “war crime” that never happened.
Unfortunately for Israel, editors at supposedly reputable news organizations around the world with immeasurably more influence than my small paper, including CNN and the BBC, were less circumspect in reporting the false allegations. (The behavior of the British press was especially disgraceful, as Tom Gross wrote at the time for National Review). In this case the lie got not halfway, but the whole way around the world before the truth got its boots on, and it’s a lie that’s still widely believed to this day.
Clearly unchastened by the Jenin experience, the world’s media has been reporting with a similar lack of skepticism on the casualty figures coming out of Gaza in recent days. Most outlets are reporting a figure of 1,200-1,300 Palestinian dead, while omitting Israeli claims that two-thirds of this number were Hamas fighters. The BBC, maintaining its inglorious record of covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, is also reporting as fact that 400 children were killed, with no evidence to support that figure. This is the same BBC that continues to report that “most” of the 1,000 or so Lebanese killed by Israel in the 2006 war were civilians, in the face of reports from multiple sources that perhaps half the dead were Hezbollah fighters.
Now the first serious challenge to these figures has emerged, in a story in the Italian newpaper Corriere della Sera that has been widely reported by the Israeli press — including here, here and here — but so far mostly ignored by the world’s media. Journalist Lorenzo Cremonesi quotes Palestinian medical staff as saying that no more than 500 or 600 Palestinians died, most of them young men. He says he visited several of the major hospitals in Gaza and found large numbers of empty beds. Cremonesi — who knows his way around Gaza, and was briefly kidnapped there in 2005 — also relates Palestinian accounts of Hamas using civilians as human shields, firing from UN facilities, and commandeering ambulances to avoid being targeted by Israeli forces.
Clearly the numbers don’t add up, so who should we believe? Cremonesi’s report is persuasive — particularly the account of the empty beds — but stands alone among reports from Gaza. And even if there was something approaching unanimity on the total number of dead, disagreements will remain as to how many were combatants and how many were civilians.The IDF and the Red Cross are carrying out detailed investigations into casualty numbers. While the Israeli military has clearly killed civilians, it says most of those deaths were unavoidable and the consequence of attacks on legitimate targets. It should also be noted that the IDF is investigating allegations of war crimes, and its troops are subject to the full force of the law.
Hamas, by contrast, clearly bears responsibility for many of the civilian deaths, and clearly has an interest in inflating the numbers. And don’t hold your breath waiting for Hamas to launch investigations into claims that its fighters stole food and medical supplies, and tortured and killed members of the rival Fatah organization.
There’s very little coming out of Gaza in the way of impartial accounts, and it’s worth bearing in mind that the sources inside the territory on which the media is largely relying are far from neutral. What the media disingenuously describes as “Palestinian” sources are, in fact, Hamas sources. Hamas controls everything in Gaza, including the hospitals.
Then there are the supposedly neutral foreign relief and medical workers, such as Norwegian doctor Mads Gilbert, who in between ward rounds was doing the rounds on CNN, the BBC, and elsewhere, where he was portrayed as something close to a Mother Teresa figure. Little Green Footballs and other bloggers have reported how Gilberts, an acknowledged supporter of terrorism, took part in an apparently staged video purporting to show the death of a Gazan child. He isn’t just some Hawkeye Pierce figure, railing against the futility of war: he’s a regular Che Guevara, throwing his lot in with the killers in Hamas to further his anti-Semitic and anti-Western agenda.
Sadly, the UN is not neutral in Gaza either. UNRWA, which is responsible for Palestinian refugees, is part of the fabric of Gazan society. It employs thousands of Palestinians, and operates, like every relief agency, under the writ of Hamas. Some of its international staff are no doubt simply toeing the Hamas line so that that they can help the people of Gaza, but others, in line with semi-official UN policy, are clearly sympathetic to the Palestinian cause and hostile toward Israel.
And so we come back to the mainstream media, through which the accounts from sources on both sides of the conflict are filtered. And the media has shown time and again that, thanks to a heady mix of stupidity, gullibility, and bias, it can’t be trusted to report the facts accurately. I’ve yet to see a piece in the MSM recalling the “lessons of Jenin,” and cautioning against jumping to conclusions over Gaza.
The truth about what happened in Jenin is known to a relatively small group of people — serious observers of Middle East politics, Israelis, and supporters of Israel who make it their business to stay informed. Others — Arab regimes and their apologists in the media and academia — know the truth but choose to conceal it or actively lie. Most non-partisan people still believe there was a massacre, because it was widely reported on TV and on the front pages of newspapers and websites around the world, while the truth leaked out slowly, months afterwards and far from the headlines.
Ultimately, people will believe what they want to believe about who died in Gaza, and how they died. Opponents of Israel will refuse to accept that most of those killed were lawfully-targeted combatants, or that most of the civilian dead were the victims of Hamas’ actions. Similarly, supporters of Israel find it hard to believe that its troops may have killed innocent people unnecessarily. But the media has a responsibility to give the same prominence to the claims of the Israeli government as it does to the claims of terrorist propagandists, and to report on accounts, such as Lorenzo Cremonesi’s, that run counter to the established narrative. So far, predictably, it’s failing miserably on both scores.
Friday, January 16, 2009
UNRWA - Hamas ally or tool?
There is a long history of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) facilities and organisation being used by Hamas, including:
• On Jan. 6, 2009, as part of defensive operations in the Gaza Strip, IDF forces came under mortar attack from within the UNRWA-run al-Fakhora school in Jabalya. In response to the incoming enemy fire, the IDF returned mortar fire to the source. The IDF return fire landed outside of the school but reports indicate that dozens of Palestinians were killed. IDF spokesmen have said that among those killed were Imad Abu Iskar and Hassan Abu Iskar, two senior Hamas rocket operatives. The presence of Hamas fighters outside the school has been confirmed by first-hand accounts by residents of the area in reports in the Associated Press and The New York Times. Israeli defense officials told the Associated Press that booby-trapped bombs in the school had triggered secondary explosions that killed additional Palestinian civilians there.
• On Oct. 29, 2007, terrorists in Beit Hanoun, Gaza used an UNWRA school to launch mortars into Israel. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon deplored the attack and asked UNRWA to conduct a full investigation.
• In May 2008 Reuters reported that Awad al-Qiq, an Islamic Jihad rocket engineer, had been moonlighting as a science teacher and deputy headmaster at the Rafah Prep Boys School, run by UNRWA. Al-Qiq was killed while supervising a factory assembling rockets and other weapons for use against Israel, located just a short distance from the school.
• Nahed Rashid Ahmed Attallah, UNRWA's Director of Food Supplies for Gaza, admitted to using his UN vehicle on multiple occasions during the summer of 2002 to transport arms, explosives, and activists from the Popular Resistance Committee to carry out terrorist attacks. Attallah also confessed to contacting members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in Syria "in order to obtain money for transferring arms to the Gaza Strip as assistance for the PRC."
• Armed Palestinians have been filmed using UNRWA ambulances to transport
terrorists and, possibly, remains of fallen Israeli soldiers in Gaza.
• Of the 17 UNRWA employees Israel has arrested and indicted since 2001 for aiding terrorists, seven have been convicted in military courts.
• UNWRA's former Commissioner-General Peter Hansen admitted that the agency has employed members of Hamas and other terrorist factions but that he was not aware of any who were active members. According to Hansen: "Hamas as a political organization does not mean that every member is a militant and we do not do political vetting and exclude people from one persuasion as against another."
• On April 25, 2007 the UNRWA representative in New York, Andrew Whitley, revealed to congressional staff that UNRWA provided cash assistance to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers.
• According to a November 2003 U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report: "During the first 6 months of 2003, assailants occupied or attacked UNRWA facilities on nine occasions."
• Alaa Muhammad Ali Hassan, a Tanzim member affiliated with Fatah, confessed during interrogation that he had carried out a sniper shooting from a school run by UNRWA in the al-Ayn refugee camp near Nablus. He also told his interrogators that bombs intended for terrorist attacks were being manufactured inside the UNRWA school's facilities.
• In 1982, President Reagan accused UNRWA of allowing its Lebanese camps to become armed bastions of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Forced to investigate when Reagan threatened to withhold U.S. funding for the organization, UNRWA admitted that several camps indeed had been militarized. While the Security Council hasn't enforced 1208 in the Palestinian territories, it has applied pressure on militant Palestinian refugees elsewhere.
In fact, a search on Google for "UNRWA and Hamas" shows numerous articles about the intricate links between the two organisations. These are from the first 2 pages of the search alone:
Gaza Bedfellows UNRWA And Hamas
How UNRWA supports Hamas
Congress Should Withhold Funds from the UNRWA
UNRWA's Hamas employees
Head of UNRWA admits Hamas members on payroll
UNRWA has no Hamas employees, and other UN fantasies
• On Jan. 6, 2009, as part of defensive operations in the Gaza Strip, IDF forces came under mortar attack from within the UNRWA-run al-Fakhora school in Jabalya. In response to the incoming enemy fire, the IDF returned mortar fire to the source. The IDF return fire landed outside of the school but reports indicate that dozens of Palestinians were killed. IDF spokesmen have said that among those killed were Imad Abu Iskar and Hassan Abu Iskar, two senior Hamas rocket operatives. The presence of Hamas fighters outside the school has been confirmed by first-hand accounts by residents of the area in reports in the Associated Press and The New York Times. Israeli defense officials told the Associated Press that booby-trapped bombs in the school had triggered secondary explosions that killed additional Palestinian civilians there.
• On Oct. 29, 2007, terrorists in Beit Hanoun, Gaza used an UNWRA school to launch mortars into Israel. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon deplored the attack and asked UNRWA to conduct a full investigation.
• In May 2008 Reuters reported that Awad al-Qiq, an Islamic Jihad rocket engineer, had been moonlighting as a science teacher and deputy headmaster at the Rafah Prep Boys School, run by UNRWA. Al-Qiq was killed while supervising a factory assembling rockets and other weapons for use against Israel, located just a short distance from the school.
• Nahed Rashid Ahmed Attallah, UNRWA's Director of Food Supplies for Gaza, admitted to using his UN vehicle on multiple occasions during the summer of 2002 to transport arms, explosives, and activists from the Popular Resistance Committee to carry out terrorist attacks. Attallah also confessed to contacting members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in Syria "in order to obtain money for transferring arms to the Gaza Strip as assistance for the PRC."
• Armed Palestinians have been filmed using UNRWA ambulances to transport
terrorists and, possibly, remains of fallen Israeli soldiers in Gaza.
• Of the 17 UNRWA employees Israel has arrested and indicted since 2001 for aiding terrorists, seven have been convicted in military courts.
• UNWRA's former Commissioner-General Peter Hansen admitted that the agency has employed members of Hamas and other terrorist factions but that he was not aware of any who were active members. According to Hansen: "Hamas as a political organization does not mean that every member is a militant and we do not do political vetting and exclude people from one persuasion as against another."
• On April 25, 2007 the UNRWA representative in New York, Andrew Whitley, revealed to congressional staff that UNRWA provided cash assistance to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers.
• According to a November 2003 U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report: "During the first 6 months of 2003, assailants occupied or attacked UNRWA facilities on nine occasions."
• Alaa Muhammad Ali Hassan, a Tanzim member affiliated with Fatah, confessed during interrogation that he had carried out a sniper shooting from a school run by UNRWA in the al-Ayn refugee camp near Nablus. He also told his interrogators that bombs intended for terrorist attacks were being manufactured inside the UNRWA school's facilities.
• In 1982, President Reagan accused UNRWA of allowing its Lebanese camps to become armed bastions of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Forced to investigate when Reagan threatened to withhold U.S. funding for the organization, UNRWA admitted that several camps indeed had been militarized. While the Security Council hasn't enforced 1208 in the Palestinian territories, it has applied pressure on militant Palestinian refugees elsewhere.
In fact, a search on Google for "UNRWA and Hamas" shows numerous articles about the intricate links between the two organisations. These are from the first 2 pages of the search alone:
Gaza Bedfellows UNRWA And Hamas
How UNRWA supports Hamas
Congress Should Withhold Funds from the UNRWA
UNRWA's Hamas employees
Head of UNRWA admits Hamas members on payroll
UNRWA has no Hamas employees, and other UN fantasies
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