As more evidence is revealed, it is clear the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) for Palestine Refugees in the Near East supported Hamas terrorists in their attack on southern Israel kibbutzim on Oct. 7. The allegations that UNRWA has been aiding and abetting terror against Israel are compelling enough that at least 16 countries have withdrawn funding support to the tainted agency. Keep in mind the United Nations was established in 1945 to bring peace to a world that had suffered through a major global war.
What makes UNRWA’s behavior more egregious is that the UN’s International Court of Justice is counseling Israel to avoid genocide in its efforts to dismantle Hamas – as one of its own agencies provided aid, comfort, and encouragement to commit, well, genocide.
Countries Suspend Funding to UN
Liberty Nation had the privilege to obtain an exclusive interview with Jed Babbin, author and columnist for The Washington Times and The American Spectator. Additionally, Babbin served as a deputy undersecretary of defense in the George H.W. Bush administration.
Liberty Nation: You wrote a book not long ago about the United Nations titled Inside the Asylum: Why the United Nations and Old Europe Are Worse Than You Think. We are learning more about the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) encouraging and supporting Hamas terrorists. Are you surprised?
Jed Babbin: Anyone who is surprised hasn’t been paying attention. For more than 20 years, [UNRWA] has been hiring members of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. All are terrorists desiring only to kill Israelis.
LN: Numerous countries – like Australia, Italy, Canada, Finland, and Germany, to name just a few – have suspended UNRWA funding. The United States has as well. Is there anything else to be done to convince the United Nations that such behavior by any of its agencies will not be tolerated and certainly not funded?
JB: The United States is the United Nations’ biggest contributor, sending something north of $12 billion per year, possibly as much as $22 billion. The State Department goes to great lengths to conceal how much we’re donating. We need to cut our contributions by at least 50% to demonstrate to the other members – and the UN staff – that we’re determined not to allow them to play their games with our money.
LN: As you pointed out in your book, the United Nations is seldom an advocate for Western values. When it was founded in 1945, the hope was it would be an organization capable of bringing some modicum of peace to the world. What grade would you give in achieving that goal?
JB: There was never a realistic hope that the United Nations or the League of Nations, its predecessor, could bring peace to the world. The saddest truth of all is that the natural state of man is war, not peace. Si vis pacem, para bellum [If you want peace, prepare for war].
Member of the Club
To complicate matters, in order to stand in the way of mischief so prevalent in the organization’s activities, initiatives, resolutions, and attempts to apply its worldview to its members is that the United States must be an active member. Whatever lofty aims the United Nations might have, it seems raking in money tops the agenda.
In a press statement, UNRWA Commissioner General Philippe Lazzarini pleaded that:
“Nine countries have, as of today, temporarily suspended their funding to UNRWA. These decisions threaten our ongoing humanitarian work across the region, including and especially in the Gaza Strip … UNRWA is the primary humanitarian agency in Gaza, with over 2 million people depending on it for their sheer survival. Many are hungry as the clock is ticking towards a looming famine.”
As sincere as these words may sound, Lazzarini’s request rings hollow in the aftermath of Oct. 7 when his staff cheered on the carnage Hamas wrought. There is a concept that all leaders, managers, and directors must understand and practice without fail. It’s called “minding the store.” Lazzarini was demonstrably not minding the store when UNRWA hired a large number of actual terrorists to work in Gaza. The situation in which Lazzarini finds his organization is one of his own making.
Israel Warned About UNRWA Supporting Hamas
UNRWA’s support of Hamas is not a new allegation. “Israel has in the past accused individual UNRWA staff of ties to Hamas, which is considered a terrorist group by the US. Most of the agency’s roughly 30,000 staff are Palestinian. Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said UNRWA should be removed from postwar Gaza,” Omar Abdel-Baqui reported for The Wall Street Journal.
Furthermore, American taxpayers have paid for the hundreds of millions sent to UNRWA by the Biden administration. “In total, his administration has provided more than $730 million in US taxpayer money to the organization since January 2021, which provides assistance in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. Biden, 81, also announced another tranche of $100 million in aid to UNRWA last October,” Josh Christenson reported in the New York Post. The fact that the United States has withdrawn funding now is little consolation for the more than 1,200 Israeli men, women, and children massacred by Hamas.
Almost comical in its ironic and forehead-slapping naïveté is the notion pushed by the US State Department that the United Nations be somehow involved in the region once the Israel-Hamas war ends. What the world would witness is the UN hiring the same cast of characters that brought us to this point. You might question why this would be the case. It’s simple. It’s the same United Nations that existed on Oct. 6.
The views expressed are those of the author and not of any other affiliation.
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