Undoing UNRWA

Israel is getting back its mojo.

Stunning military successes against Hezbollah, Hamas and Iran, have emboldened Israel’s leaders to act, despite worldwide pressure for restraint. Victories in Rafah and Lebanon, especially the obliteration of enemy chiefs and operatives, have encouraged Prime Minister Netanyahu and Israeli leaders to thumb their noses at detractors in the U.S. and Europe, at least to a certain extent. Chief among them, the Biden Harris administration, which had demanded Israel avoid the areas where they subsequently triumphed.

These victories seemingly motivated Israel to advance on the diplomatic front as well, albeit with undiplomatic pushback. This past Monday, the Knesset overwhelmingly passed bills barring the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) from operating in Israeli territory and prohibiting Israeli state authorities from having contact with UNWRA.

MK Dan Illouz, a co-sponsor of the legislation, called the bill’s passage a “historic moment”. He said, “The Knesset put an end to an organization that supports terrorism and endangers our lives. We stood up to international pressure and did not break.”

There was widespread international opposition to the legislation, which passed in two bills with a Knesset vote count of 92-10 and 87-9. Josep Borrell, EU’s chief foreign envoy, said the rule “stands in stark contradiction to international law and the fundamental principle of humanity.”

Without citing UNWRA’s links to Hamas, UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said the bill violated international law and was “the latest in the ongoing campaign to discredit UNRWA.”  

State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller called the legislation “deeply troubling”. Indeed, when the bill underwent its first reading in the Knesset back in July, Miller demanded the Knesset “halt the movement of this legislation”. He said then that “the attacks that the Israeli government has leveled on UNWRA are incredibly unhelpful.”

Attacks leveled on UNWRA are “incredibly unhelpful”? The richness of such irony rivals only the billions of dollars that have been poured into UNWRA itself by donor countries. Miller is quick to accuse Israel of “attacks” against UNWRA but conveniently leaves out UNWRA’s long history of antisemitism and confirmed attacks against Israeli civilians on October 7.

Contradicting Miller’s assertion, MK Yulia Malinovsky, another sponsor of the legislation, called UNRWA “a terrorist organization” and “a fifth column within the State of Israel”.

But UNWRA is worse than a fifth column, which works secretly to sabotage the country it lives in. UNWRA workers have openly endorsed the destruction of the State of Israel.

The Wall Street Journal reported that one in ten UNRWA employees in Gaza is either an active member of or has ties to Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad. These include teachers, social workers, nurses, sanitation workers and others. In addition, Hamas commonly uses UNRWA schools and facilities to launch rockets at Israel and store weapons.

It is why President Trump in 2018 decided to end all U.S. contributions to UNWRA. That decision itself was late in coming. UNWRA, established many decades ago as a temporary enterprise to resettle 600,000 Arab refugees after the 1948 war, turned into a permanent non-solution that ballooned into attending over 5 million so-called refugees.

Dr. Joseph Frager, Executive Vice President of the Israel Heritage Foundation, summed it up. “UNWRA’s involvement with Hamas is why President Trump decided to defund them, a move we supported at the time and continue to support. UNWRA has been complicit with Hamas from day one. That complicity is widespread and endemic, despite the world wanting everyone to believe that there were just a few people involved in the genocide of October 7.”

Israel Heritage Foundation’s Executive Director Rabbi David Katz concurs and applauds the resolution’s sponsors, including MK Dan Illouz. “Illouz had the courage to push for this legislation, which we hope will prevent the furtherance of terrorism.”

The organization’s involvement with terrorism was revealed by Israeli investigations, which discovered UNRWA employees openly participated in the October 7 massacre. Hundreds if not thousands of UNRWA members were found to have terrorist ties.

Israeli citizen Jonatan Samerano was murdered at the Nova Festival on Oct. 7 and his body was abducted to Gaza by an UNWRA social worker.

UNRWA-employed teacher Yusef Zidan Suleiman al-Hawajara was recorded bragging to a friend on Oct. 7 about capturing a female hostage.

In September, Hamas admitted that Fatah Sharif Abu al-Amin, chairman of UNRWA’s Teachers’ Association, was its commander in Lebanon.

UNRWA employee Muhammad Abu Atiwi, who was eliminated by the IDF, led the October 7 Hamas massacre that murdered many Israelis in a shelter near Re’im and abducted Hersh Golberg-Polin and others into Gaza.

And the list goes on. Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon, who battles UN hypocrisy daily, especially as the UN continues to coddle Hamas, points to UNWRA’s blatant failure. “It has been overrun by Hamas and is unfit to continue in its function as a humanitarian agency.”

UNWRA’s iniquities, however, did not start on October 7. For decades, UNWRA-led schools and camps have routinely delegitimized and demonized Jews and glorified Palestinian murderers of Israelis. Palestinian children in Gaza and in Judea and Samaria even receive military training with the goal of killing Jews.

None of the above matters to the UN, which has yet failed to condemn Hamas for the October 7 massacre. Yet, somehow, no one seems to care.

Only the theater of the absurd would showcase a UN Human Rights Council with members such as China, Cuba, Russia and Venezuela, among others. Certainly, the hit show at such a theater would have to be the one, this past February, in which UNWRA was on the shortlist for the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize.

The accumulation of such absurdity, with its tragic cost in human lives, finally reached a breaking point. As Israel enters its second year fighting an existential battle that has only earned it continued censure rather than support at the UN and among its enablers, this week’s Knesset legislation exemplifies Hillel’s famous words, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?” If the rest of the world conspires against the one Jewish state, Israel does not have to be complicit in its own demise.

Sara Lehmann is an award-winning New York based columnist and interviewer. For more of her writings please visit saralehmann.com.