At UN, no division between aid and terror

By Jonathan S. Tobin 
October 12, 2004
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What does it mean when the head of a United Nations agency tells the press that he believes that members of a terrorist group are on his payroll and that he's okay with that? 

In the case of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), the answer is that it's simply business as usual. 

The United Nations has long been a bastion of anti-Israel sentiment. UNRWA, one of two refugee agencies run by the world body, is the living example of this bias. UNRWA deals only with the Palestinians. The other deals with the rest of the world and the countless conflicts and refugee populations created by every other war that has been fought elsewhere. 

This division of authority has been the backbone of the Palestinians' strange status as the only refugee population that relief workers do not attempt to resettle. In combination with the restrictive anti-Palestinian refugee policies of the Arab world, UNRWA has helped to keep these people in a state of impoverished limbo that is useful to anti-Israel propagandists who dream of destroying the Jewish state. 

But how can even the most anti-Zionist of UN bureaucrats justify the use of the agency as a cover, both literally and figuratively, for Palestinian terrorist activity? 

Since the beginning of the current terrorist war against Israel four years ago, the use of Palestinian Red Crescent ambulances by terrorist groups has been well documented. Now it appears that UNRWA vehicles may be used in this manner as well. 

An Israeli surveillance drone took photos of what were at first believed to be a Kassam missile being loaded onto an UNRWA ambulance last week in the Gaza Strip. UNRWA denied the claim and a closer look at the evidence may prove their innocence in this case. But the controversy only underlines what is already taken for granted by Israelis: that UNRWA personnel and facilities are at the disposal of the terrorist groups. Indeed, Israel has already arrested 13 UNRWA employees for taking part in terrorist activities. 

This notion was reinforced by UNRWA head Peter Hansen who told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that I am sure that there are Hamas members on the UNRWA payroll and I don't see that as a crime. 

It's true that not everyone in Hamas carries a gun or a bomb, but allowing even unarmed Hamas members the free run of UNRWA resources, at best, makes the agency a facilitator for terror and, at worst, a co-conspirator. 

Given this see-no-evil attitude on the part of UNRWA, it's not surprising that many of its thousands of employees see no barrier to using its facilities, vehicles and its financial resources to assist the ongoing violence directed against Israeli civilians. 

While no one seriously believes that the Palestinian Authority and its leadership is interested in stopping the missiles being launched from inside Gaza into Israel, it is quite another thing for an agency operating in the name of the world peacekeeping body -- and the recipient of hundreds of millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars -- to play the same sort of shell game. 

No one expects the United Nations itself to reprimand Hansen, but the response from the United States to this should not be tepid. Washington should halt the transfer of funds to UNRWA until Hansen is fired and the agency's payroll has been purged of terrorists. Anything short of that would not only be a violation of U.S. law, which prohibits aid money from being used to support terror, but also a fundamental violation of trust. 

Views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.