The U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) is an anti-Israel organization which perpetuates Middle East conflict.
UNRWA does so primarily in two ways. First, it defines Palestinian refugees not only as those who fled during the Arab attempt to extinguish Israel’s 1948 birth, but also subsequent generations. This has created the political and legal myth that several million descendents of several hundred thousand refugees having a “right of return” to Israel.
Prof. Miriam Elman noted the corrupting effect of this unique status:
For 70 years UNRWA has fueled an unrealistic hope and has encouraged millions of Palestinians to “dream” of a ‘right’ of return, because unlike every other refugee population on the planet, UNRWA allowed Palestinians to inherit refugee status. In preventing peace and reasonable compromise, it’s a false hope that’s been even more devastating for the Palestinians than the pack of lies and false promises told to them by their own leaders back in 1948.
The second way in which UNRWA perpetuates the conflict is by teaching Palestinian children to hate Jews and Israel. We have posted in detail on this subject several times:
Momentum has been building for the U.S. to cut funding for UNRWA. And it finally has happened.
The Times of Israel reports:
The Trump administration announced Friday it is cutting nearly $300 million in planned funding for the UN agency that aids Palestinian refugees, and that it would no longer fund the agency after decades of support. Instead, it said it would seek other channels by which to aid the Palestinians.The administration castigated the UN’s Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) for failed practices, and indicated that it rejected the criteria by which UNRWA defines Palestinian refugees, whereby the UN agency confers refugee status not only on original refugees but on their millions of descendants.The State Department said in a written statement that the United States “will no longer commit further funding to this irredeemably flawed operation.”“The fundamental business model and fiscal practices that have marked UNRWA for years – tied to UNRWA’s endlessly and exponentially expanding community of entitled beneficiaries – is simply unsustainable and has been in crisis mode for many years,” the statement said, a reference to the fact that the agency grants refugee status to all the descendants of the original Palestinian refugees, something not granted by the UN to refugees from any other places.
The Palestinian Authority and Hamas both attacked the U.S. over the move, the Jerusalem Post reports:
A spokesman for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas called the US decision a “flagrant assault” against the Palestinian people, and a “defiance of UN resolutions.””Such a punishment will not succeed to change the fact that the United States no longer has a role in the region and that it is not a part of the solution.”In Gaza, the Islamist group Hamas also condemned the US move as a “grave escalation against the Palestinian people.””The American decision aims to wipe out the right of return and is a grave US escalation against the Palestinian people,” said Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri.Abu Zuhri told Reuters the “US leadership has become an enemy of our people and of our nation and we will not surrender before such unjust decisions.”
There is a fear that the collapse of UNRWA will further exacerbate the conflict. But UNRWA is a force for anti-Semitism and anti-Israel incitement. There needs to be an alternative to the fictions and hatred UNRWA nurtured.
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