UNRWA scandal

by Jack Cohen

The UN Relief and Welfare Agency (UNRWA) was founded in 1950 as a temporary means to assist Palestinian refugees who had fled Palestine during the Israel War of Independence, when six Arab countries attacked Israel.  Since then it has become a bloated permanent agency that caters to all needs of the Palestinian "refugees" in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, and the West Bank/PA.   

 

UNRWA has become one of the main factors in permanently perpetuating the Israel-Palestine Arab conflict:  It is certainly not aiding in the so-called peace process. There  are several major questions that need to be asked of UNRWA:

 

1. Why is it that Palestinian "refugees" are increasing every year, while all other refugee populationss in the world are actually decreasing.  The offical UN agency that deals with refugees, the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNCHR) defines a refugee according to the standard interational definition, as one who leaves his/her country of origin for humanitarian reasons (war, civil unrest, danger).  But UNRWA is unique in the world that defines refugees as not only those that left their country of origin, but also their descendents ad infinitum.  When the conflict ended in 1948  there were estimated to be 720,000 genuine refugees.  Since then, as natural decrease has occured over time, the number of genuine refugees (those 65 and over) has decreased to ca. 30,000, but the number of UNRWA defined refugees has now reached 5 million (see graph)!  When will this nonsense stop, when there are 60 million, 100 million?  Its an absurd situation. 

    (The data in this graph is taken from actual UNRWA statistics of all Palestinian refugees.  The number of "actual refugees" 65 and over is taken from a poll in 2012 showing ca. 30,000 survivors and the graph is a linear interpolation from the original figure of 720,000.  May be used with attribution)

 

2. Why is the US paying m$275 per year to support these unrefugees.  And why is this US contribution one third of the total UNRWA budget, when not only is the US in financial crisis.  Instead these funds could be used to help the million Arab refugees from Syria and the US sufferers of Superstom Sandy in the NY area could well do with support like m$275.  And as the number of Palestinian unrefugees increase, the US contribution is increasing accordingly year by year.  There needs to be a major Congressional investigation into this profligate waste of taxpayer money!

 

3. The funds given to UNRWA have been used to support terrorism, to support the teaching of hatred of Israel and of Jews, UNRWA schools have been named after terrorists and suicide bombers have been glorified in these American-supported schools.  Money is fungible, just as an example, Israeli planes pinpoint the crews of missile launchers.  One of those killed in May 2008 was Awad al-Qiq, who was the chief rocket maker for Islamic Jihad.  He was also a science teacher in an UNRWA school.  So the US funds given to UNRWA were helping an UNRWA teacher to develop missiles to fire into Israel.  This has to stop! (see http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/may/19/defund-unrwa/ )

 

Action needs to be taken; It has been proposed that UNRWA be incorporated into the UNHCR and that only genuine refugees according to their definition as applied to all other refugees on earth should also be applied to the Palestinian refugees.  Why should they be treated differently, why should they receive up to 10 times more per capita than other refugees and why should the US support most of this bloated bureaucracy that helps to prevent peace?