The images of death and destruction in Gaza are terrible. The cruelty of Hamas’s leaders of letting the population suffer while refusing to surrender and instead hiding in tunnels underground, is a shocking display of cowardice that will be marked by generations of orphans.
Gaza ruins
Many countries are trying to figure out a way to bring humanitarian supplies to the civilians of Gaza without the food and medical supplies being rerouted to the Hamas political-terrorist group which has directed the atrocities. The arguments about whether UNRWA is best qualified to handle the situation as they have existing facilities and personnel in Gaza bypasses a critical and fundamental matter.
Why should descendants of Palestinian “refugees” from 75 years ago get better medical treatment and access to food during this war than regular Gazans?
There are a few hundred thousand regular Palestinian Arabs who have lived in Gaza for generations. They are just as injured and displaced as their “refugee” neighbors who have been living next to them for the past 75 years. Will the United Nations only supply food and medicine to those who call themselves “refugees” while letting other Gazans go hungry?
The crux of the situation in Gaza is a humanitarian crisis, not a refugee crisis. It should be handled by the Red Cross which is best equipped to enter war zones and remain neutral.
UNRWA is a toxic organization which has fomented hatred and discontent which led directly to the October 7 massacre. Its mission, budget and staff are vehicles designed to end the Jewish state. It causes emergencies, it doesn’t address them.
All emergency relief for Gaza should be handled by the International Red Cross as a matter of efficiency, neutrality and equity. Showing preferences for the grandchildren of refugees is a mockery of humanity and shows the ongoing perverted nature of the United Nations in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
‘Shield’ is an English word which is both a noun and a verb. As a verb, it means to protect something, and as a noun, it means an emblem that represents an organization.
UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine refugees, acts and is Hamas’s shield.
In attempting to root out the Hamas political-terrorist group from Gaza which committed savage butchery of Israelis on October 7 in line with its antisemitic genocidal charter, Israeli troops entered and dug around UNRWA schools, hospitals and administrative buildings. It found incontrovertible proof that UNRWA is part of the Hamas war machine against Israel.
Hamas not only stores weapons in UNRWA locations, it deliberately locates its command centers under UNRWA facilities to keep the IDF from bombing it. While Israel developed an iron dome defense system which uses technology to shoot down Hamas rockets targeting Israeli civilians, Hamas uses UNRWA to protect its military infrastructure in Gaza.
In New York City, where the thin veneer of UNRWA’s 100 or so Europeans cover the fact that the rest of UNRWA’s 30,000-member staff are local Palestinian Arabs, the well-dressed leaders of the “humanitarian” agency defend Hamas to its voluntary donor countries. UNRWA talking heads appeal to countries assembled at the once-respected UN halls and attempt to deflect attention from UNRWA’s complicity and participation in the sickening and sadistic attacks on innocent Jewish civilians.
The dozen-plus member of Hamas that participated in the cruelty were dismissed as a few rogue employees. The 3,000 Hamas teachers that celebrated the massacre on Telegram were ignored. Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on occupied Palestinian territories, said (5:35) in the immediate aftermath of October 7 that “you Palestinians are always questioned, second-guessed, misinterpreted and defamed.”
Finally, many countries are looking at the plain evidence and can no longer turn away from UNRWA’s ongoing flimsy protection of vicious murderers. The UNRWA misdirection campaign which attempted to tug heart-strings is unraveling, and moral countries have begun to halt their donations to the agency which is complicit in the ongoing genocidal actions against a member state.
Unbowed, UNRWA continues to appeal directly to individuals donors on social media, hoping that they don’t read the news or despise Jews and the Jewish State to fund the UNRWA-Hamas front.
UNRWA campaign on Facebook, February 2024
UNRWA is not simply trying to defend itself against the mounting evidence of working hand-in-glove with Hamas to keep the money flowing to 30,000 Palestinian employees of the organization as well as to keep the lights on in hospitals and schools. As the world sees that UNRWA is not a neutral party, the agency loses all aspects of immunity. Its locations can be raided and bombed and its officers charged alongside Hamas with crimes against humanity.
The entire United Nations knows its on a sinking ship and is throwing the heaviest burdens overboard (firing the dozen October 7 murderers) and is spinning wild and unbelievable narratives. UNRWA is in a fight for its survival and will not pause in lying boldly and repeatedly that it is a humanitarian group that at worst is woefully ignorant and inept.
UNRWA acts as a shield FOR Hamas in Gaza, and a shield OF Hamas at the United Nations. The end of Hamas in Gaza must be coupled with the end of UNRWA at the UN.
In 2022, UNRWA raised $1.175 billion, quite a haul. Of that money, $751 million came from designated programs while the balance was raised in emergency appeals.
The biggest donors by far were western countries, seemingly overcome with guilt that Palestinian Arabs haven’t been successful yet in destroying Israel.
Country
2022 Contribution
$ per Citizen
United States
$344 million
$1.01
Germany
$202 million
$2.43
European Union
$114 million
Sweden
$61 million
$5.87
Norway
$34 million
$6.30
Japan
$30 million
$0.24
France
$29 million
$0.43
Saudi Arabia
$27 million
$0.75
Switzerland
$26 million
$2.99
Turkey
$25 million
$0.29
Top 10 donors to UNRWA in 2022
The Scandinavian countries of Norway and Sweden were by far the most drawn to UNRWA. Not only were they among the top ten donor countries, they far exceeded all countries on a per capita contribution – 20 times as much at Turkey.
There were only two Muslim countries in the top 10 donors, one of which isn’t Arab. Despite the trillions of petrol dollars coming from the Gulf, most countries couldn’t be bothered with sending money to UNRWA.
Some of the largest Muslim countries in the world – Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Malaysia – gave a grand total of $459,000. The total population of those four countries is 708.2 million, meaning each person gave UNRWA an average of $0.0006. Egypt, abutting Gaza with about 85 million Muslims, didn’t send a single dollar.
Consider the countries hosting UNRWA facilities including Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and “Palestine” which is not recognized by most of UNRWA’s major donors. Each only contributed “in-kind,” essentially meaning giving office space to UNRWA for free.
It’s not as though Iran doesn’t give money to Palestinians, or Qatar limits its funding to the $10.5 million it contributed in 2022. It just sends the money directly to the political-terrorist group Hamas without the pitstop at the UN.
While the United Nations might sound global, it’s funded by western democracies while serving the “global South” and agendas of dictatorships and Islamic regimes (DIRs), including 50 Muslim-majority countries. Those DIRs channel western dupes’ monies to their causes via the UN, while simultaneously directly funding the more radical parts of their agendas.
The western world is complicit in funding the fungible farce. While it knows full well that Palestinians favor terrorism and want the destruction of Israel, it sends “humanitarian” money for education and health services through the United Nations, knowing that the military component is funded directly by DIRs.
In light of the recent reports that many UNRWA employees participated in the October 7 pogroms, that over one thousand aided and abetted the atrocities and several thousand employees cheered the massacre, many western countries have suspended funding of that deeply problematic UN agency.
The evidence that UNRWA is complicit in aiding the Hamas antisemitic war has been publicly known for many years. Tunnels and armaments are found throughout UNRWA schools and a teacher was a famed bomb maker for Hamas. UNRWA textbooks have long called for jihad and killing Jews.
This reality is baked into the very nature of UNRWA staffing. While the United Nations typically appoints a White European to oversee the organization to make it appear as a European entity, almost every single employee is a local Palestinian Arab.
Using UNRWA’s own information from 2019-2020, when the agency broke information into finer detail, there is barely any international staff working in Gaza or the West Bank. Between the two regions, only 44 out of 15,850 staff, or 0.3% were from outside of the region. Further, UNRWA mostly hires the descendants of Palestinian refugees as seen in the graphic above. Roughly 96% of UNRWA’s Gaza staff claims to be a “refugee.”
According to a 2017 UNRWA report, “With the exception of 155 international staff posts funded by the General Assembly through the UN regular budget, UNRWA operations are supported through voluntary contributions.” The Swiss, Norwegian and other global staff of UNRWA are paid by the United Nations and the rest of the world contributes whatever it wants whenever it wants to the over $1 billion UNRWA budget.
And the western donors are finally done.
UNRWA is a front for the world to funnel money to descendants of internally displaced Arabs, who speak the same language near the same neighborhoods with the same people as grandparents did. The UN ignores facts and calls them “refugees,” and promises that they’re going to get to move into towns where grandparents lived 75 years ago in Israel, going from a third-world economy to a first world society, in yet another form of misplaced expiation.
In its most benevolent form, it’s ransom via guilt. In reality, it is in funding terrorism and destroying any possibility for coexistence.
Israel accused the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) of having many staff members involved in the October 7 Palestinian genocidal attack against Israel. In response, the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres asked UNRWA to investigate itself, and find out the veracity of the charges and to fire those who committed atrocities.
Several western countries, who make up the majority of the funding of the UN agency, suspended their contributions. They include the United States, U.K., Finland, Australia, Canada, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Japan, Iceland and Estonia. So far.
This is not a surprise. UNRWA is staffed almost exclusively by Palestinian Arabs; only the thin veneer of the executive management is European.
UNRWA has long been known and accused of teaching students to kill Jews and destroy Israel. Many staff members have been bomb makers for Hamas. Tunnel shafts at UNRWA schools lead down to Hamas’s terrorist tunnels.
In February 2023, the U.S. House of Representatives put forward H.R. 1102 “The UNRWA Accountability Act” which called for withholding funds to the UN Palestinian group if “UNRWA staff and partners nor its funding and facilities are affiliated with terrorism or disseminating certain rhetoric, such as calling for the destruction of Israel or describing Israelis as occupiers or settlers.” The U.S. Senate had a similar bill, S.431.
For much of 2023, Israel had been rooting out terrorists from UNRWA schools in the West Bank, Jenin in particular. UNRWA’s West Bank terrorists committed and planned to commit several attacks against Jews. Those terrorists were not only from Hamas which carried out the October 7 massacre, but the Jenin Brigades and Lion’s Den, other very popular terrorist groups.
UNRWA in Jerusalem (photo: First One Through)
Guterres has asked donor countries to renew payments to the agency, arguing that a few bad apples shouldn’t mean that millions of Palestinian Arabs should suffer.
But he completely misses the point.
UNRWA is the leading CAUSE of the October 7 attacks. Its mission of funneling billions of dollars into Gaza and the West Bank to employ Palestinian Arabs and miseducate them that Israel is an illegal European colonial state and that millions of descendants of Arabs who left Israel in 1948 have an “inalienable right” to move into the Jewish State is the main reason that the conflict has dragged on for decades. UNRWA in Gaza and the West Bank must be dismantled and the agency’s operations in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan should be folded into the other agency to handle refugees, UNHDR.
The United States has taken the first steps in UNRWA Accountability. It must lead to the termination of the toxic agency to forge a pathway towards coexistence.
The United Nations has long been a terrible actor in the Israeli-Arab conflict, perpetuating the conflict through terrible policies and procedures. One of the worst offenses which contributed to the October 7 massacre and the current Gaza War was backing the “right of return” for millions of Arabs into Israel.
The United Nations agency, UNRWA, services roughly 7.5 million people of which 6.7 million are registered as refugees, with another 763,000 on the global dole. The vast majority of the 7.5 million are descendants of people who used to live in Israel in 1947. Amongst these so-called “refugees,” approximately 1.8 million live in Gaza and 1.1 million in the West Bank, a total of 2.9 million, or 43 per cent of UNRWA “refugees” live inside of 1947 Palestine.
These 2.9 million have been told by the United Nations that they will get to move into Israel for the last 75 years, based on a single line in UN General Assembly Resolution 194 of December 1948, that has long passed its expiration date. With that false promise, Gazans spend their time and money building a war infrastructure rather than an economy as they don’t imagine a future in their current neighborhood of historic Palestine, but in the Jewish State.
On January 23, 2024, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres may have laid the groundwork to finally end the dream of these 2.9 million Palestinians that their future homes will be in Israel.
In his remarks to the UN Security Council he said “The right of the Palestinian people to build their own fully independent State must be recognized by all. And any refusal to accept the two-State solution by any party must be firmly rejected. What is the alternative? How would a one-State solution look with such a large number of Palestinians inside without any real sense of freedom, rights and dignity? This would be inconceivable.”
The first part of Guterres’s comments is simply wrong. No state has a right to exist. None. Not Portugal, not China, not South Sudan, not Kurdistan. Individuals have a right to self-determination and there are many ways for that to be realized which do not create another Arab and Muslim country.
The second segment of his remarks, marked in bold above, is an important milestone for the UN. It is the first time Guterres essentially rejected the notion of Arabs swarming Israel – either in a one state solution or as part of a two-state solution in which 6.7 million Arab “refugees” enter the Jewish State.
Finally acknowledging that this will not happen, Guterres should make an unambiguous statement that there is no “right of return” for Arabs into Israel, a stale idea floated over 75 years ago in the midst of the 1948-9 Arab-Israeli War. In addition to such proclamation, he must follow up with actions to dismantle the “refugee” camps which dot Gaza and the West Bank, where UNRWA schools teach young Arabs that they will move into Israel and where UN facilities have keys above the portal to emphasize that the doorway for Palestinians to move into Israel is via the United Nations.
Entrance to Aida Refugee Camp (مخيم عايده) in Bethlehem with keyhole gateway and key on top to symbolize that UNRWA is the pathway for Palestinians to return to ancestors’ homes.
The United Nations finally said the obvious, that millions of Palestinian Arabs moving to Israel is “inconceivable.” It is time to explicitly state that there is no “right of return” and to dismantle the “temporary” refugee camps in Gaza and the West Bank which have long served as incubators for extremism and terrorism.
The global population was roughly 2.5 billion people in 1947. Less developed countries had a population of roughly 1.75 billion, and there were about 800 million in the developed world. Back then, the populations of China, India, the USA and Russia were about 570 million, 360 million, 150 million and 100 million, respectively.
Quite a different world then today.
The world was once much more regionalized. In 1947, there were fewer than 25 million international tourists; that figure was nearly 1.5 billion in 2019 before the pandemic, and has slightly rebounded to just under 1 billion in 2022. There were only about 10 million foreign-born people in the US in 1947, a number closer to 45 million in 2018. The figures are similar in Europe.
Computers were just starting to be used 75 years ago, with today’s pocket smartphones having more capabilities than those gigantic governmental ones. International calls cost a fortune as opposed to today’s free over-the-top calls made to people everywhere in an instant.
Technology and transportation have made the world smaller and people migrate much more than they did 75 years ago. Just since 1990, Europe went from having a foreign-born population accounting for roughly 5.5% of the population to nearly 10.5% in 2015. In the United States, it went from 7.9% to 13.9% over those same years.
Laws and regulations changed over the past 75 years which contributed to global migration patterns beyond technology and transportation. Many more immigrants from Latin American countries come to the United States now, whereas they used to come from Europe (75% in 1950s). Countries pass laws based on current realities and desires for the future. They tinker with immigration policy based on global demand as well as their own demographic needs for labor.
No country enacts policies to RECREATE A REALITY that existed in the past. They do not pretend that it’s 1947 and that laws passed back then have relevance to today’s reality.
Except for the United Nations as it relates in Palestinian Arabs.
The UN continues to bless the Palestinian desire for a “Right of Return” to homes that grandparents once lived in inside Israel based in a resolution passed in December 1948 when the Arab war to destroy the new State of Israel was still being waged. While the UN and Palestinians ignore most of Resolution 194 as it obviously has no bearing on today’s reality, they continue to prop up a single provision, article 11 which states:
“Resolves that refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible.“
Supporters of Hamas express their solidarity with the Jenin refugee camp, in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip on April 10, 2022. Days before, gunmen from Jenin went on a shooting rampage in Tel Aviv killing three Israelis and wounding more than a dozen others. (Photo by MOHAMMED ABED / AFP)
People correctly point out that almost all Palestinians today are not refugees and are unwilling to live at peace with Israel as demonstrated time and time again. More basically, today is not 1947, and the same way that UNGA Resolution 194 calling for the internationalization of Greater Jerusalem and Greater Bethlehem is no longer contemplated, so has the concept of a “right of return” long passed its expiration date.
The UN may advocate for Palestinian self-determination but cannot demand a right-of-return to Israel. All nations must make clear that they support terminating a concept which was captured in a single line in a resolution passed in 1948 in the middle of a war.
ACTION ITEM
Email White House “Make clear that our country opposes the idea that descendants of Palestinian refugees have a “right of return” to towns inside Israel which was contemplated as part of a broad end to the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. It continues to foment frustration, hatred and encourages war in the region.
Many people wonder what will happen after the end of the 2023 Gaza War. Will the Palestinian Authority take administrative control of the area with Israel serving a military function, much like Area B in the West Bank? Will Hamas 2.0 rise from the ashes, the way Queen Rania of Jordan (herself of Palestinian descent) predicts, which will be a “new generation of resistance that is fiercer and more violent.”
There is a better way. To end Palestinian atrocities and the horrible death on both sides, one needs to speak a plain truth at the core of the conflict to understand how to end it.
The United Nations and Saudi Arabia must state clearly that there is no ‘right of return’ for Palestinian Arabs to go to Israel. The Arabs’ future lies in Gaza or parts of the West Bank that will be under the Palestinian Authority, or another country that welcomes them, should they decide to leave the region.
Palestinians have been lied to by the United Nations for 75 years that they will get to return to homes where grandparents once lived. The United Nations continues to call many Palestinians “refugees” and places keys atop UNRWA “refugee” camps to tell them that the UN is much more than a services agency: they are the gateway to returning to Israel.
Portal to UNRWA Aida “refugee” camp near Bethlehem
The UN maintains refugee camps inside Gaza and the West Bank to tell Palestinian Arabs that the land they stand on – which was part of Palestine in 1947 – is just a waiting zone. They will get to move to Israel someday.
So the Arabs have grown very frustrated. Rather than make a life in Gaza and the West Bank, they covet the first world country next door that it really belongs to them. Palestinians vote for invasion rather than investment.
Approximately 81.2% of UNRWA wards reside in what was the British Mandate in 1922 or what was annexed by Jordan with Arabs given citizenship. Almost all of them have self-determination, either as citizens of Jordan or under the Palestinian Authority and Hamas in the West Bank and Gaza. There are really only Syrian and Lebanese “refugee” descendants which need to be addressed.
And those in Syria and Lebanon should move to a new Palestinian State.
Before Israel left Gaza in 2005, U.S. President George W. Bush sent Israeli Prime Minister a letter in April 2004 to encourage the Israeli action: “It seems clear that an agreed, just, fair, and realistic framework for a solution to the Palestinian refugee issue as part of any final status agreement will need to be found through the establishment of a Palestinian state, and the settling of Palestinian refugees there, rather than in Israel.”
The Democratic Party long held the same notion in its platform stating “The creation of a Palestinian state through final status negotiations, together with an international compensation mechanism, should resolve the issue of Palestinian refugees by allowing them to settle there, rather than in Israel.” The Obama/ Biden Administration had that statement removed in 2012, stoking Palestinian anger/hope which bubbled into 2014, 2021 and 2023 wars from Gaza against Israel, each under either President Obama or President Biden.
The United Nations and Saudi Arabia need to deliver the message ending the ‘right of return’ so that Palestinians know these intifadas to destroy Israel are over. It is time for Palestinian Arabs to focus energies on building institutions, economy and society, and abandon the genocidal efforts to destroy the Jewish State.
UNRWA should announce a wind down of all camps in Gaza, the West Bank and Jordan, and funnel those monies to actual refugees who really need the services, fleeing their homeland to faraway countries where they are strangers not knowing the language, people or land. Saudi Arabia should play a role in rebuilding the Gaza infrastructure together with Israel, and push the Iran-Hamas alliance into the dustbin of infamy.
The future for coexistence relies on terminating the ongoing failed policy promoted by the United Nations for 75 years, and a new Saudi-Israeli alliance might be the pathway to broader peace.
Israel successfully eliminated several terrorists in the United Nations-administered zone in Jenin and confiscated many weapons. Rather than consider why the UN harbors so many terrorists, the global body used the opportunity to fundraise.
Under the banner of “Jenin Emergency”, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) ran a series of advertisements appealing for funds for the “Jenin Palestine Refugee Camp.” It inverted reality and made the terrorist enclave the victim of Israeli aggression, rather than self-reflect as to why the UN is the mother hen of a terrorist training facility.
Other charities jumped into the circus and started spending money on promoting this false narrative to collect monies for their coffers, even a peaceful sounding group like “Save the Children.”
The “DONATE” and “DONATE NOW” buttons flooded the screens with appeals for “humanitarian aid” for the “suffering and hardship that the children in the Jenin refugee camp are enduring.” The sites relayed stories of an assault of the “Israel Armed Forces” on residents of Jenin. Nowhere was there a discussion of the Arab killers who live in their midst and the overwhelming support that the terrorists receive from their neighbors.
Today, 57% of Palestinians support terrorist attacks against Jewish civilians inside of Israel.
The Palestinians have already started their “intifada” and have gone on the offensive asking for donations to fund their terrorism against Jews. While the poorly named “Second Intifada” witnessed Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Iran being the main sponsors of the murderers, today, anti-Israel charities are asking the rest of the world to underwrite the spilling of Jewish blood.
Boat packed with as many as 750 fleeing migrants capsizes off Greece in June 2023
Since 2014, the United Nations International Organization of Migrants estimates that 56,912 migrants and refugees are dead or missing. This year is set to be perhaps the deadliest on record, as thousands of people flee their homes due to war or poverty.
The United Nations and media spend a scant moment mourning these poor souls. Men, women and children who reluctantly ran to far-away lands in pursuit of peace were quickly forgotten. No actions are taken to prevent the frequent tragedies.
The United Nations has other priorities:
For synthetic “refugees” over real refugees; and
For people who seek to murder over defenseless souls
The UN has dressed up Palestinian Arabs who have been living in the same land for generations, as a special class of “UNRWA Refugees”. It pardons their jihadi violence against Israeli Jews as a matter of routine and concocted resolutions.
The media closes its eyes and minds to the facts that Palestinian Arabs are not refugees who do not deserve a special UN agency accompanied by a promise of invading a UN member state. Politicians suspend belief that they favor a two state solution while simultaneously advocating that the Jewish State shouldn’t be Jewish and forced to take in millions of Arabs from a few miles away.
The UN held a week-long conference on counterterrorism in June, and subsequently informed Israel that only the rest of the world can combat the global scourge. Israel must accept jihadi violence as penance for its existence.
The UN Security Council is now scheduled to meet to invert reality in discussing Israel’s successful raid to eliminate terrorists in Jenin but will not convene to dismantle UNRWA camps in Gaza and the West Bank which serve as the incubators for Muslim extremists.
It is terribly sad that politicians, the United Nations and media do not attend to peaceful people in actual dire need. It is a horrific state of reality, that the world supports jihadi extremists living next to Israel in their quest to kill Jews and the only Jewish State.
First One Through 