More on “UNRWA’s Hamas problem” from the Jerusalem Post, with thanks to GG:
Much ink has been spilled about UNRWA’s pro-Palestinian bias. Of course, it’s biased. Today UNRWA is a Palestinian organization with a thin UN veneer.
In its Gaza and West Bank field offices, UNRWA has 12,916 employees, of whom only 37 are not Palestinian.
No one should have been surprised when UNRWA Commissioner Peter Hansen admitted that UNRWA employs Hamas members or sympathizers. Can anyone expect those 37 internationals to screen almost 13,000 Palestinian employees — mostly residents of the refugee camps — for Hamas affiliation, even if they wanted to?
UNRWA cannot even prevent posters of suicide bombers from being plastered on the walls of its schools, or teachers from extolling suicide bombers.
THAT HANSEN did not see the hiring of Hamas members as “a crime” is just the latest example of his unfitness for the UN post.
During Operation Defensive Shield he lent credence to Palestinian lies about Jenin:
“I had hoped that the horror stories of Jenin were exaggerated and influenced by the emotions engaged, but I am afraid these were not exaggerated and that Jenin camp residents lived through a human catastrophe that has few parallels in recent history.”
Apparently, Hansen’s “recent history” did not extend back three weeks to the Passover massacre in Netanya, where more civilians died than in Jenin.
When the reports from Jenin, including his own, were completely refuted, Hansen offered no apology or even acknowledgement.
Peter Hansen is only part of the UNRWA problem. In addition to employing Hamas members or sympathizers, UNRWA likely feeds and loans them money too.
The US government’s General Accounting Office asked UNRWA whether it screens its beneficiaries for ties with terrorist organizations, as required by section 301(c) of the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act.
UNRWA replied that it could not, because its staff would be endangered.
Reporting on one incident, the General Accounting Office highlights the extent to which the Palestinian street, not the UN, controls UNRWA.
The houses of six Palestinian families on UNRWA’s registry were “destroyed during bomb-making activities,” yet UNRWA concluded there was not enough evidence to deny them benefits under the terrorist-exclusion rule.
American and European taxpayers provide those benefits via the US government’s and European Union’s support for roughly 75% of UNRWA’s budget.