Israel boots UNWRA

OPINION:

In late October, the Israeli parliament passed two laws that ban the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East — UNWRA — from operating in Israeli territory and prohibits Israeli cooperation with it. 

UNWRA, of course, says that Israel’s new laws violate international law and the U.N. charter.

Established in 1949, UNWRA is responsible for keeping Palestinians in permanent refugee status. No other group — racial, ethnic or religious — has permanent refugee status. UNWRA has consistently been a political tool that the Arab states and others use against Israel. 

Hamas has reportedly stolen much of the aid that has flowed into the Gaza Strip. The end of Israeli cooperation with UNWRA will reduce some aid to Gaza temporarily. 

The reason that the new Israeli laws were passed was UNWRA’s cooperation in the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel by Hamas. An unknown number of UNWRA employees either engaged in the attacks themselves or helped Hamas perpetrate them. The U.N. has since fired nine UNWRA employees, but that doesn’t end Israel’s problems with UNWRA, which are more than two decades old. 

Twenty years ago, I wrote a book about the U.N., “Inside the Asylum: Why the UN and Old Europe are Worse than You Think.” In it, I detailed how UNWRA was complicit in terrorist attacks against Israel. 

To begin with, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, then Ireland’s Mary Robinson, sanctioned the use of “all available means” to fight Israel. Because UNWRA came under the authority of the high commissioner, Ms. Robinson thus enabled cooperation between UNWRA, Hamas and other terrorist groups.

In the book, I quoted the sworn statement of University of Chicago professor Rashid Khalidi. He testified that UNWRA employed members of Fatah, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, or PFLP, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, all of which are terrorist gangs. UNWRA didn’t then, nor does it now, vet employees against membership in terrorist groups. 

My book went on to quote an address to the U.N. General Assembly by Israel’s then-deputy U.N. ambassador, Arye Merkel, who pointed out terrorist acts in which UNWRA was complicit.

In that speech, Mr. Merkel reported that Palestinian terrorists were repeatedly firing on Israeli positions from the grounds of a UNWRA school. He named confessed terrorists who were employees of UNWRA, including Sama Oudeh, a Hamas member who admitted concealing explosives in a UNWRA school; Nadal Nazal, a UNWRA ambulance driver who confessed that he had used his ambulance to ferry arms and operational orders to Hamas; and Nahed Atallah, another UNWRA employee, who confessed that, as a member of al-Fatah and the PFLP, he used UNWRA vehicles to transport terrorists to attack Israeli soldiers and civilians.

That was 20 years ago. Since then, the problem has only gotten worse. Hamas is deeply embedded in UNWRA, so much so that Israeli forces in Gaza have found weapons and supplies in or under virtually every UNWRA school, hospital and other buildings. Hamas tunnels are usually found under UNWRA facilities. 

It’s likely that UNWRA employees are helping Hamas hide the hostages it took on Oct. 7, 2023. 

Hamas took over 240 hostages that day, among them seven Americans. About 100 of them — including three Americans — are believed to still be alive. Because Hamas still refuses to release the hostages — and because Israel wants to eradicate Hamas — Israeli forces still attack terrorist positions in Gaza. 

For more than a year, the Biden-Harris administration has done nothing to help Israel compel Hamas to release any hostages.

Israel, limited by the White House, struck only a few military targets in response to the Oct. 1 missile attack by Iran. Leader Ali Khamenei on about Oct. 31 demanded that Iranian military forces strike back at Israel for its counterattack. How severe and when that response will occur is known only to Iran.

This brings us to the latest anti-Israel actions by the Biden-Harris administration.

On Oct, 13, the Biden-Harris regime sent a letter to the Israeli government threatening to cut off U.S. funding and military aid unless the Israelis “reverse the downward humanitarian trajectory” and increase aid to Gaza. 

That letter was sent 12 days after Iran’s Oct. 1 missile attack, which had drained Israel’s missile defenses. It came at a time when Israel was desperately trying to replenish its antimissile and anti-drone defenses, some of which are made in the U.S. 

Mr. Biden did one thing almost right. He sent a battery of Terminal High-Altitude Air Defense missiles to Israel. But he also sent U.S. troops with them, which puts them high on the list of targets for Iranian missiles and drones.

Israel, as this column has often pointed out, is fighting our war as well as its own because Iran is as much a threat to us and Europe as it is to Israel. If we had a real president, he would be tasking the CIA to fund and arm Iranian revolutionaries to overthrow that evil regime. 

On Jan. 20, we’ll have a real president again. Over to you, Mr. Trump. 

• Jed Babbin is a national security and foreign affairs columnist for The Washington Times and contributing editor for The American Spectator.