Ayalet Samerano, Mother of Israeli hostage held by UNRWA worker

Full remarks:

Good morning everyone.

Last week the Hostage Families Forum held a press conference and the world heard my cry. A mother’s cry.

I would like to tell you a little bit about Yonatan.

About his core values as a 21-year-old and the way he was raised.

The young people that go to these parties, like the NOVA party, believe in freedom, in democracy, in accepting every one of us as equal.

Yonatan and his friends believe in acceptance and care for our world, for the earth and for all human beings and animals.

My young son’s generation don’t care about religion, faith, sexual orientation or race, they just want to live a peaceful and happy life.

My son was not armed, he was not in a war situation, his only weapons were his smile, happiness and charm.

Yonatan was full of life.  Always smiling, always joking.

He did everything with joy and people always wanted to be near him, to be his friends.

Yonatan’s entire existence was full of life.  Even now we cannot think about him in relation to tragedy, and murder.

Yonatan is the life and the life is Yonatan.

You are asking me why UNRWA needs to be replaced?

An UNRWA worker kidnapped my son.

A social worker for a so-called humanitarian organization kidnapped my son.

How can someone working for an organization that claims to do good in this world do something so cruel and inhumane?

How can the UN pay this man who dragged my son’s limp body on the ground, and then picked him up if he was a prize back to Gaza?

How many more lives have been ruined by this person hauling my son like he is not even a human being into a UNRWA car?

Are there any other hostages held by UN employees even as we are speaking right now?

Does the UN hold my son? Do you know where he is? Bring him back to me.

Mr. Guterres, look me in the eyes and answer me NOW, where is my son? Bring him back home.

You are next door. You have the opportunity to speak with me and tell me what happened to my son.

I’m not an investigator and cannot answer these questions.

I’m just a mother who lost the most precious thing in the world.

That is why I am standing here before you today and demanding answers about my son.

We already have proof that at least 42 UNRWA employees took part in the October 7th terrorist attack – for me there is only one decision:

UNRWA has no reason to exist.

UN, clean your house! 

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Ambassador Meirav Shahar, Permanent Representative of Israel to the U.N. in Geneva

Full remarks:

Thank you very much Hillel, and thank you for gathering us – to you and your team – for this very timely conference, I have to say. And also thank you for the work that you and your team have been doing for the last decade on UNRWA, exposing many of the things that you’ve just referred to and bringing them to light.

Unfortunately, not many listened, as they should have, and especially not the United Nations.

Indeed, I am coming right now from the opening of the Human Rights Council, where the president of the General Assembly himself said that UNRWA is an “indispensable lifeline”. And of course, Secretary-General Guterres said that UNRWA is the “backbone of assistance” to the Palestinians. So indeed, as you’ve mentioned, there is a closing of ranks among the different agencies of the United Nations to make us believe that there is no alternative. 

But I’m here to say that there is an alternative, and there must be an alternative to UNRWA.

If there’s anything that October 7th showed us – and I don’t think that too many were surprised – but showed us very clearly and very vividly, it’s that workers of UNRWA itself were involved in the massacre of October 7th. Directly involved. UNRWA workers held hostages in their homes. We know this from returned hostages, and soon we will hear also from Ayelet. 

We know that Hamas has exploited UNRWA facilities for years and years, and they were shielded by UNRWA facilities, like the database that was found under the UNRWA headquarters. But this is just one example.

The fact that Hamas diverted the aid supplied by UNRWA that was supposed to go to Palestinian civilians was evident. But what the IDF has found in the last four months, it’s evident for everyone who wants to see it, who really wants to look in and see it and acknowledge it. The data is there. The pictures are there. The information is there.

So even if there was any debate before October 7th as to whether the intelligence is correct, whether it’s just rumors – which it wasn’t, because we had evidence from over the years as well – I think that the argument and the disagreements should stop. 

And the international community, and the United Nations itself, must acknowledge that Hamas is actually, together with UNRWA, basically interlinked, because you have such an infiltration of Hamas into the UNRWA workers that, in a sense, what UNRWA is allowing Hamas to do is to shield them, to embed them.

The international community is paying UNRWA, and UNRWA is allowing Hamas to do what they do best: to embed themselves among the civilian population. And this must stop. 

I can tell you from my own experience that I was the director of the UN Political Affairs in Israel between 2009 and 2012, and I dealt directly with UNRWA. In 2011, we already wrote an official letter to UNRWA indicating names of people that we suspected were terrorists. 

We never got a response.

I can tell you that two of the people that are on this list are still employed by UNRWA today. No surprise. A teacher and a principal.

The same in 2012. We wrote another letter. No surprise there, no answer there. And also some of the people later on – it was discovered in 2017 – that one of them became a leader of Hamas. He couldn’t keep his day job in UNRWA as well.

But it’s not something that started only on October 7.

We already alerted UNRWA officially, and that’s only from my own experience. I can’t say what happened after I left.

I will not touch on the refugee definition of UNRWA because I know that both Einat and Adi probably will touch on it at length, but there’s no doubt in my mind that it’s also perpetuating the conflict itself. 

What is being taught in the schools has been discussed for years. Very little was done about it.

But, at the end of the day, what Mr. Guterres and Mr. Lazzarini need to ask themselves is: How many of the attackers on October 7 were not only directly employed by UNRWA, but educated by UNRWA schools? We are talking about thousands of terrorists that infiltrated into Israel. How many were educated by UNRWA schools? And certainly, it seems that the schools of UNRWA have cultivated a culture of hate, and not a culture of peace that we were all hoping for over the years. 

To me, it’s clear that Israel will not be able to continue to work with UNRWA in Gaza. To me it’s clear. We do welcome the countries that have suspended their assistance to UNRWA, and we welcome the two investigations that were opened.

I do want to say about the international review group that is headed by the former foreign minister of France, Catherine Colonna, that they have included certain institutions, indeed Nordic ones, but what we would expect is also to include experts on security, counterterrorism, and vetting process, because the vetting process obviously has failed completely. Completely.

And this is the responsibility of the employer. When the United Nations employs someone, they should have a clear vetting process – which they don’t have. You cannot put the blame onto someone else. You are the employer.

So we would expect this inquiry also to include experts, not only humanitarian experts, but also to include experts on counterrorism, security, and vetting, as I said.

And also the TOR, the terms of reference, of their commission, needs to be more concise. Not too broad, but more concise. What are we looking at? We are looking to see: How do you actually prevent the employment of terrorists? It sounds as simple as that, but that’s not in the TOR. That’s not in the terms of reference. How do you make sure that in the future you won’t employ a terrorist? How do you ensure that Hamas or Islamic Jihad will not infiltrate your organization and use your infrastructure to their benefit?

So it remains to be seen how they will deal with all this. Indeed, it’s a very short time of investigation that they have allocated themselves.

But I have to say, for me, representing Israel, knowing what we know today about October 7th, about the direct involvement of UNRWA employees in the massacre, I don’t see a way for Israel to continue to work with UNRWA in Gaza.

Thank you very much.

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Ambassador Dennis Ross, Counselor at Washington Institute for Near East Policy, former U.S. point man on Middle East peace process

Full Remarks

Thanks for having me. I think it’s very important that you’re running this program. There’s been years and years of discussion about the need to reform UNRWA, the need to replace UNRWA with different programs. Obviously, in the midst of what’s going on in Gaza, that’s hard to do. UNRWA is the main body responsible for distributing assistance right now. 

But that cannot be a reason not to take a very hard look at UNRWA and look at changes that need to be made, both in terms of how UNRWA operates on the one hand and also for basic reforms that are needed on the other. Reforms, which by the way, would have other agencies begin to play a role in place of UNRWA. 

So what are the key changes that I think need to be made? 

Number one, UNRWA cannot be subservient to Hamas. It’s not just that it employs people who are Hamas members, supporters and so forth. That we know is a fact. It’s also that it’s clear that one of the most important operational and intelligence centers underground was underneath the headquarters of UNRWA within Gaza City. The argument that this was not something that could have been known, the character of this tunnel was such that it would have been impossible to be in the building and not know, or hear, what was going on underneath. This was a kind of classic case of “hear no evil, see no evil, and not want to discuss any evil.” So the subservience of UNRWA to Hamas, that has to end, number one. 

Number two, there needs to be a thorough vetting of the people who work for UNRWA. There are plenty of lists that are available, certainly the United States has a list of terrorists that OFAC produces. There should be vetting of the people who are working for UNRWA and compared to that list. UNRWA has never been prepared to accept anything like that. That is unquestionably something that needs to be done. 

Thirdly, beneficiaries of UNRWA also need to be checked against these lists. It’s not just the people who are employees of UNRWA, it also has to be those people who are benefiting from it. 

Fourthly, there has never been a needs-based standard, by which those who are getting support from UNRWA, material support from UNRWA, are being tested. Those who don’t require assistance shouldn’t be getting it. 

Fifthly, the idea that every generation, no matter where they live, should still be treated as if they’re on the books, as refugees, makes no sense on its face. So, this is another area where I think there needs to be basic reform with regard to UNRWA.

Beyond what I would call reform, I would say there are other programs that ought to take the place of UNRWA. The World Food Program should be responsible for distributing food rather than UNRWA. 

We know that, again, you can’t go cold turkey here. You need a transition. Even if you weren’t in the midst of a war, where UNRWA is really the only vehicle for the distribution of assistance. The fact is, at some point when this is over, UNRWA was providing about 60% of all the meals in Gaza, before this. Why not focus on having the World Food Program take its place? And by the way, the monies that are given to UNRWA, you would deduct that, and you would give that money to the World Food Program so that it could be performing this role. 

There’s also the question of the refugees who are in Lebanon or who are in Jordan. In the case of Jordan, they’re full citizens. And as full citizens, it’s not clear why again, UNRWA should be the vehicle for this. There can be other, again, if UNRWA is providing material support to people in Jordan and Lebanon, that material support should still be provided, but it shouldn’t necessarily — at least in the case of Jordan, where they are citizens, unlike in Lebanon where they are not — UNRWA should not be the vehicle for it. 

The vehicle in Lebanon could be the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. In Jordan, it should be something that’s worked out with the Jordanian government, and monies that are given by different countries to UNRWA could be given directly to the Jordanian government to provide to those who are in fact Jordanian citizens. 

These strike me as an array of different kinds of reforms and/or steps that could be taken and should be taken. 

One thing we should learn from this war: UNRWA, if not by design, certainly by consequence, effectively was a vehicle for Hamas. One thing that should not be the case in the aftermath of this war, is that UNRWA continues to play the role it did. 

Again, I’m not saying you should go cold turkey, but you should create a transition away. Because what UNRWA is doing, if UNRWA maintains the same role, if UNRWA is given this kind of continuing responsibility, it will allow Hamas to come back in. 

There is no possibility of producing reconstruction in Gaza if Hamas remains in control, and if UNRWA is a vehicle to help it be in control, it means Hamas will continue to divert any materials away to rebuild its military capability, to reconstitute itself. And if that happens, first of all, donors won’t invest in reconstruction, because they know not only about the diversion of materials, but they also know sooner or later, Hamas will trigger another conflict. So you’re not going to get reconstruction. 

The key formula for the end of this war is going to be demilitarization, and guaranteed demilitarization for reconstruction. And there is no doubt that the Israelis are actually succeeding when it comes to demilitarizing Gaza. I would actually like to see Israel redefine its objective as the demilitarization of Gaza, identify the level at which they feel they have produced enough so that you can then have international and regional mechanisms that are guaranteed to ensure there can be no remilitarization. 

Part of ensuring no remilitarization is Hamas is not only not in control, because no one, again, is going to invest if that’s the case. But also, UNRWA cannot be a vehicle for it being able to re-establish itself in Gaza. If there’s any lessons at all that we’ve learned, that’s one. 

So, bottom line here is UNRWA must continue to perform humanitarian service right now during the course of this war, but there needs to be a transition away from UNRWA over time. And the kind of reforms I spoke about earlier really need to be instituted. 

Thanks very much for having me.

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James G. Lindsay, Former UNRWA General Counsel

Full Remarks:

Thank you Hillel. Very kind. Good afternoon now and thank you for all being here and for that long introduction. 

During my years with UNRWA, I suggested several ways that the agency could improve its operations. But I found that these sorts of suggestions were not welcome by the people in charge.

I started as a senior lawyer, but not the senior lawyer, and neither the senior lawyer nor the other members of the UN staff were receptive to really any changes to be made to UNRWA.

After leaving the agency, and as a visiting fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, I wrote a monograph entitled, “Fixing UNRWA” which urged UNRWA to make a large number of reforms.

It’s now 15 years since I wrote that and other people have also made critiques of UNRWA and suggested ways that it can be improved. As near as I can tell, all of those suggestions, mine and other people’s, have remained unwelcome, and they certainly remain unheeded. 

With the recent intelligence indicating that large numbers of UNRWA staff are associated with terrorist groups, a lot of the calls for reforming UNRWA  have somewhat fallen by the wayside and been replaced by calls to end UNRWA.

But how exactly would that be done?

There are three ways that I can think of that it could in fact be ended. 

The first one is, the General Assembly of the United Nations created UNRWA and it could end UNRWA. 

As a practical matter, that’s probably not going to happen. Most recently in December of 2022, the General Assembly once again renewed UNRWA’s mandate for another three years. The votes on that were: there was 1 vote against renewing UNRWA, there were 10 abstensions, and there 157 votes in favor of continuing UNRWA, so as a practical matter, I don’t think this is going to happen in the General Assembly.

Another way to end UNRWA is for the donor nations to withhold their donations. Which is a bit of what we’ve been hearing today already. Moving the donations from UNRWA to somewhere else.

In the past that has not been overwhelmingly successful. In 2018, the Trump Administration eliminated all American aid to UNRWA, but other countries, including European countries increased their aid to try to offset the loss of American aid. And to a very large extent that did occur and UNRWA was not forced to make any changes of significance.

In 2019, somewhat better story, Switzerland, Belgium and the Netherlands temporarily withheld their donations due to a scandal involving UNRWA’s Commissioner General, and their donations were renewed, but only after the Commissioner General had resigned. So there was a bit of a modest success there.

Right now we have, as some of the speakers have mentioned, a situation in which 18 of the largest donors have withheld their denotations. They have paused them. But the language used with this discussion of pausing is suggesting that the donations would resume once the UN internal investigations were completed and UNRWA gave assurances that corrective actions were being taken.  

Still, that’s not very encouraging really, but still there are two things about this that are unprecedented. Firstly, is the large number of donors pausing their donations. That’s 18 and they constitute at least two-thirds of the money that UNRWA needs to constitute its professed budget.

The second thing is that the US is being pressed by the Congress to eliminate funding, and that has forced the administration to mention that it is looking at alternatives i.e. non-UNRWA ways to provide aid to Gaza. Again, that is something that the Americans have not done before. And one can hope that other donors who have paused will be trying to do the same thing.

I believe it’s possible that the donor nations could defund and thus end UNRWA. But it is not 100 percent sure by any stretch of the imagination.

The third way to end UNRWA is for the host nations to refuse UNRWA access to the areas under their jurisdiction. Now as a practical matter, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon will not take that step. They see themselves, and want to be seen as being supportive of the Palestinian cause. And in addition, they fear that they will be the ones that end up paying the bill. 

Israel though, which controls the borders of Gaza and the West Bank, is different. Israel has been hinting that it would be using the defeat of the terrorist forces in Gaza and the subsequent Israeli occupation to create a new and peaceful self-governing authority. There have been a lot of rumors in the Israeli press about what that would consist of. But as part of this ambitious plan UNRWA would be replaced by other organizations as quickly as possible without creating some sort of a humanitarian disaster. The Israeli military particularly has been concerned that removing UNRWA immediately would cause them difficulty in their  operations 

As of last Friday, these hints have become more realistic when Prime Minister Netanyahu said it has become official Israeli policy to remove UNRWA and to create a peace-loving state in Gaza.

Even if the Israeli plans succeed in Gaza and even if it is successfully transmitted to the West Bank, it really doesn’t appear that UNRWA will disappear like tomorrow. Not in Gaza, certainly not in the West Bank, and for sure not in Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. It just won’t happen. 

So in my view while UNRWA  still exists, whether in whole in all 5 areas or even in just 3 of them, even if just continued in Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon, the donors, if they can’t end UNRWA, they must insist upon it being reformed. 

The reforms are ones that people have indicated for many years that should be made. And I’ll give you the most important ones. The first is of course because of October 7 is that all UNRWA staff and all beneficiaries should be vetted for terrorist ties using information provided by donor nations and the relevant host nations, including the Israeli government. 

Second, as Ambassador Ross mentioned, those agencies denominated Palestine refugees who are not actually refugees according to the UN Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, should be removed from the rolls of UNRWA. There are about 1.8 million of these oxymoronic citizen refugees in Jordan alone. This is out of the 5.9 million, so with the stroke of the pen, you could reduce the size of UNRWA dramatically. 

Thirdly, as I’ve urged on UNRWA many times in the past, they should move from a status base i.e. a person who is called a Palestine refugee by their definition, to a needs-based provision of services. There’s no particular reason why people who don’t need aid should be given aid, which makes less available for those who need aid. 

Fourthly, UNRWA should eliminate from its currently used educational materials all anti-Israel and antisemitic material incompatible with UN principles and it should immediately revise its textbooks and curricula as necessary. This has been urged on UNRWA for many many years. And the excuses they give for not doing it are quite weak. They insist that they have to use local textbooks so that when their students graduate from grade school and go to high school that they will be properly prepared, as if there is some sort of UNRWA mathematics which is different from Syrian mathematics. There is no reason why, and I have proposed many times, that all their materials be vetted by some neutral body like UNESCO to remove any anti-UN principles material. 

And lastly, As I’ve said, and this is still a big issue, UNRWA, and particularly its commissioner generals, should refrain from making political comments which they do all the time unnecessarily. 

So in summation, I think for the first time there is a real possibility of movement towards ending UNRWA at least in Gaza and the West Bank. But that said, as long as UNRWA operations continue, donor nations should demand that those reforms I just mentioned should be enacted. Doing so would make UNRWA more rational, less political, and much smaller, and when the time comes, easier to end. Thank you.  

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Congressman Ritchie Torres, US Congressman

Transcript

Hello, I’m Congressman Ritchie Torres from NY-15 in the Bronx. 

Associate Justice Robert Jackson served as the chief prosecutor in the Nuremberg trials. In his opening statement he said, “the wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish are so calculated, so malignant, so devastating, that we cannot tolerate their being ignored because we cannot survive their being repeated.” 

Those same words should be said about October 7th. Israel cannot tolerate October 7th being ignored, because the Jewish state cannot survive it being repeated. For me, October 7th was a crime against humanity so barbaric that it cannot be ignored, it cannot go unpunished.

Hamas must be removed from power, and the perpetrators of October 7th must be brought to justice. 

Israel has a right to defend itself against Hamas in the aftermath of October 7th for the same reason the United States had a right to defend itself against Al Qaeda in the aftermath of 9/11. Self-defense is the right, and responsibility, and raison d’être of every nation-state, including the Jewish nation-state.

I want to commend Hillel Neuer for turning the light of truth upon the systemic antisemitism of UNRWA, and the larger Palestinian refugee industrial complex. Not only did your reporting and Israeli intelligence implicate several UNRWA employees in October 7th, but UNRWA itself has long been indoctrinating its students with anti-Israel and anti-Jewish hate. 

Let me be clear, hate will never bring peace, it will only bring more violence and more senseless suffering. We must stop perpetuating the ideologies and institutions that perpetuate hate. Pure and simple. We must be clear-eyed about the incestuous relationship between Hamas and UNRWA.

Hamas exists not to govern Palestinians in Gaza, but to murder Jews in Israel. UNRWA, long-funded by Western tax dollars, has long been governing Gaza at the behest of Hamas, so that Hamas–which sees governing as a mere distraction– could dedicate itself to the murder of Jews in Israel, the construction of terror tunnels in Gaza, and the militarization of its own civilian population and civilian infrastructure. 

That the international community would cut a deal with the devil is so scandalous and shocking in its stupidity that it leaves one speechless. But that deal with the devil, which has persisted for far too long, is finally collapsing under the weight of its own corruption, and rightly so.

Hamas must be removed from power, the perpetrators of October 7th must be brought to justice, and UNRWA, long a purveyor of anti-Israel, and anti-Jewish hate, must be replaced. 

It should be possible for the international community to provide urgently needed humanitarian aid to Palestinians in distress without inciting hate and violence against Israelis and Jews. 

A sustainable peace will require a demilitarization and de-hamasification of the Gaza Strip. It will require a deradicalization of Gazan civil society which for far too long has been miseducated by UNRWA and manipulated by its lies. 

A wise person once said, you do the same thing over and over again and expect a different of result. That is the definition of insanity. The time has come to end the insanity of an ideology that does not celebrate the life of Palestinians but instead celebrates the death of Jews. 

We must end the hate, and we must end the insanity.

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Bonnie Glick, Senior Adviser at Center for Strategic and International Studies, former Deputy Administrator of U.S. Agency for International Development

Full Remarks:

Thank you Hillel, I want to thank you and your great team at UN Watch for inviting me to speak here at this international summit on transitioning beyond UNRWA. As you said, I served as the deputy administrator and chief operating officer of the US Agency for International Development for two years and during this period we took a serious look at U.S. assistance to Palestinians. For a variety of reasons, we determined that assistance to Palestinian NGOs, the Palestinian Authority, and significantly, to UNRWA  were not good investments of American tax dollars. Whereas UNHRC focuses on resettling refugees in third countries and allowing them to build new lives, as we well know now, UNRWA focuses on the perpetual victimhood of Palestinians while giving them only one glimmer of misbegotten hope that one day they will take over the land of Israel and cloak it in red, green, white, and black colors. Did Palestinians living in Arab countries ever benefit in the way resettled refugees from all around the world have benefited? The simple answer is no. So why does UNRWA continue to play a role in Palestinian society, why are Palestinians the only so-called refugee group in the world that can never grow out of refugee status? 

The United States was built as a haven for people who were oppressed around the world. Refugees in America are resettled, their children are educated, and they have hope for a better life for themselves and for future generations. But future generations are not called refugees, they are called Americans. I’ve been calling for the dismantlement and the defunding of UNRWA within my own government for over a dozen years. It’s a tragedy that it took Oct 7th, and the wanton, sadistic slaughter of 1200 Israelis, Americans, Thais, Nepalese, Argentines, Danes, Canadians, and a dozen others, as well as the abduction of over 240 men, women, children, elderly, and babies, and the rapes of still untold hundreds of women, girls, boys, and men, for the world’s eyes to be opened. 

When the world’s eyes were opened, there were a few eyeballs that remained glued shut, unyielding in support of Hamas, unwilling to see the facts of the violence of Oct 7th. 

Among those who were willfully shielding their vision were UN Women, the ICRC, the WHO, SG Antonio Guterres himself, and of course Philippe Lazzarini and his fellow underworld bosses in UNRWA. Underworld is actually an apt description as we’ve all learned, Hamas had an enormous tunnel directly underneath the UNRWA’s headquarters in Gaza.  Electricity, lighting, refrigeration, plumbing, and lodging for Hamas leaders, all were provided by UNRWA. 

What a shock, of course for Mr. Lazzarini, to learn that the world finally learned his agency’s secrets. Both Mr. Lazzarini and Guterres deny any knowledge of Hamas’ activities in collaboration with UNRWA, despite the fact that UN Watch has been providing them information about the worst-kept secret in the Middle East for easily a decade. I believe that Secretary Guterres and Mr. Lazzarini should not represent the future of the United Nations. 

So what does a future for the UN without UNRWA look like? What happens with the growing, not shrinking, number of Palestinian refugees? First and foremost, Hamas must cease to exist. Second, every single hostage held by Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Gazans civilians, including numerous UNRWA employees, must be released to Israel. Among those hostages of course, are at least 5 American citizens. A stewardship committee, likely led by Israel, will slowly begin the process of figuring out how to handle all of the so-called Palestinian refugees. 

Certainly, those who wish to be resettled in third countries, and there will likely be millions of them, should be free to do so. For the purpose of resettlement, a temporary solution could include the UNHCR but I would recommend a firm, time-bound lifespan for this effort. Given the Palestinian so-called refugees are now into their fifth and sixth generations with that status, UNHCR should act with alacrity to resettle those wishing to move. Many countries have offered sanctuary. Some Palestinians may choose to remain in Gaza. There will be a slow process of building from scratch a civilian-led government. 

Those Palestinians will be charged with rebuilding lives, and funding for that should come principally from their Arab brethren. It’s all but certain that countries like China will be slow to respond to calls for rebuilding of Gaza. China has not been financially generous to Palestinians in the past. Indeed images of the Jewish state called to the International Court of Justice on charges of non-existent genocide against Palestinians leaves CCP leaders quaking in their boots, as they are actually committing genocide against their own population of muslim Uyghurs. When I was in government, we called out actual genociders, like China. The UN’s Kangaroo Court is inexplicably accusing the one country that rose from the ashes of actual genocide of perpetrating this heinous crime. I’m fairly certain that many countries will step up to help a civilian-controlled Gaza emerge. It will take time, but people of goodwill have a habit of demonstrating their generosity even when their goodwill is so often taken for granted. The UN and UNRWA must stop taking people of goodwill for granted. They have proven that they are not worthy.

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Einat Wilf, Writer, former Member of Knesset, co-author of “The War of Return”

Full remarks:

Thank you so much, and really thank you for doing this.

Sometimes I wryly joke that in 1947, the United Nations let it slip that it supported the establishment of a Jewish state and it has spent all the years since, trying to walk that back.

We will never understand UNRWA unless we understand that it is, first and foremost, a Palestinian organization.

I sometimes say that if you want to understand UNRWA, think about an airplane, which is a lovely machine until it gets hijacked and flown into a building. 

In the same way, UNRWA started with the best of intentions to settle Arab refugees from the war, was hijacked by the Arab refugees themselves to become a purely Arab Palestinian organization, for the singular cause of ensuring that the Jewish state knows not a day of peace until it is undone. 

This is what UNRWA is. It has a thin layer of Italians and Swiss with beautifully cut suits who ask for money, because it is very difficult to give money to a Palestinian who will tell you, “From the river to the sea.” It is much easier to give it to a nice-speaking Italian.

So, what do we do? 

UNRWA is a classic case of you get what you pay for.

So we need to make sure that we pay for something else.

For 75 years, money, legitimacy, support, services, aid, were given – were funneled – to the perpetuation of the myth that Palestinians are still – uniquely, from all the tens of millions of refugees throughout the 20th century – refugees from a war that we think ended 75 years ago. But they don’t think it ends until they win it to their cause of no Jewish state.

So all the Western legitimacy, the global legitimacy, the funding, the aid, the services were funneled to the perpetuation of the myth of the refugee status and to the belief and the fictional idea of a right of return. 

And lest we think that return is an innocent idea of just feelings of nostalgia to a home that belonged to a great-grandparent in today’s Israel, October 7th is return. 

October 7th is the realization of the Palestinian vision of return. It was never an innocent idea. It always had the element of violent, brutal triumphalism over the Jewish state. All the money supported that for 75 years. 

So what we need to ask right now is not who will replace UNRWA – that doesn’t matter – but what? What will replace UNRWA?

And what needs to replace UNRWA is any mechanism that only funnels legitimacy, support, money and aid to those who are taken off of UNRWA’s rosters; those who are no longer registered as refugees; those who sign and make it clear that they understand that they’re not refugees and that they posses no such right of return. Only then can something be built.

Adi and I are on the record now, with books and essays and lectures and meetings, telling donor countries for years: Don’t give a single dollar. Don’t give a bag of cement to UNRWA anywhere, and certainly (not) in Gaza. 

As long as the people of Gaza – 75 percent of whom are still registered by UNRWA as refugees from Palestine – don’t give them anything as long as their dominant ideology is not to think of Gaza as the home which they wish to make into the “pearl of the Mediterranean,” the “Dubai of the Levant.” As long as their ideology is to literally use Gaza as a launchpad to “liberate” Palestine from the river to the sea, Adi and I are on record as telling donor countries: You are guaranteed that all your money, your aid, your bags of cement, will go into turning Gaza into a highly effective war machine, in order to exercise the brutal vision of return.

So this is what we need to say: It doesn’t matter who replaces UNRWA – but what replaces UNRWA? Reverse the equation. Legitimacy, money, aid, services will flow only to individuals who have been stricken off UNRWA’s rosters, if it still exists, and who themselves testify that they understand that they’re not refugees, that they do not possess the right of return, and they have no intention of liberating Palestine from the river to the sea.

And I want to end with one thought: October 7th should put an end to the notion of “the poor Palestinians” – the ones who constantly need aid, aid, money, support. The Palestinians are a highly capable people. October 7th required years of planning, massive investment in infrastructure, strategy, discipline, vision – a perverse vision – but vision. The Palestinians are not an incapable people. They are a people with terrible priorities.

For a century they decided to devote all their substantial capabilities not to building something for themselves, but in order to destroy the Jewish state. And as long as this is their ideology, anyone who gives them any kind of funding, aid and legitimacy is guaranteed that this will be funneled to the destruction of the Jewish state and to continued war. And if people really want peace, and really want to abide by the principles and the vision of the United Nations, reverse the equations: Support those who want to put the war behind us, not the ones who want to keep fighting that war.

Thank you.

The post Einat Wilf at the International Summit for a Future Beyond UNRWA appeared first on UN Watch.

Hillel Neuer, Executive Director of UN Watch

Opening remarks:

Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, my name is Hillel Neuer. I am the executive director of United Nations Watch. We are marking our 31st year since we were founded here in Geneva to monitor the United Nations and hold it accountable to the principles of its own charter.

I would like to welcome all of you, and people watching around the world online, to the first-ever international summit for a future beyond UNRWA. 

We are at a turning point. Just a few weeks ago, most of the donor states of UNRWA led by the US froze their funding for the first time to this agency over evidence that members of the UNRWA staff actually took part in the atrocities of October 7th. Evidence, as reported in the Wall Street Journal that anywhere between 1,200 to 1,500 employees of UNRWA, a so-called humanitarian group, actually belong to Hamas and Islamic Jihad. And with us here, we will hear from her later is Ayelet Samareno, she is the mother of 21-year-old Yonatan who tragically was murdered on th October and his lifeless body is seen on a video, and we will see it later when she speaks, was taken away by an UNRWA social worker. It is seen on video of [him] driving a white SUV with UNRWA license plates. That just underscores so much of what we will hear today. The problem with this supposedly humanitarian organization.

So countries have frozen funding, that’s where we are at today. They have created two inquiries, one is by the Internal Oversight Office, known as OIOS. We’ll hear shortly from Ed Flaherty, he is a lawyer here in Geneva and he is an expert on UN investigations. And we are going to understand how this OIOS is indeed perhaps the last kind of entity that can conduct an independent investigation. It’s not independent, we’ll hear from him about that. 

There is a second investigation, which is very significant. It’s headed by Catherine Colonna, the former French Foreign Minister, she just stepped down about a month ago. She heads this independent review group set up by the Secretary-General. It’s supposed to look into how UNRWA deals with violations of neutrality and how they respond to it. And there are serious questions about the independence of this group. Catherine Colonna herself as she stepped down, she sent a tweet, message, publicly to the head of UNRWA congratulating him on his wonderful work which is needed now more than ever. This was on January 14th, 4 days after we began to reveal the telegram chat group of 3,000 UNRWA teachers who were celebrating the atrocities of October 7th. So after we initially exposed it, 4 days later, Catherine Colonna, French foreign minister, congratulated UNRWA on their valuable work that is “needed more than ever.” Is she really qualified to conduct a credible, objective, serious independent review? The question answers itself. 

The three other institutions joining her all have prior pronouncements and statements and reports on their websites, which are anything but objective when it comes to UNRWA. So the international community is now waiting, this investigation is due to give back an interim report in a month’s time, at the end of March. 

Secretary-General Spokesman Stéphane Dujarric said this group is intended to reassure the donor states, in other words “you’re all going to have to give back your funding and we set up this review group to reassure you.” 

So in a sense, it’s all predetermined. We know already in advance that the group headed by Catherine Colonna will reassure the donor states and they want to reinstate the funding. But we do have this one month or two months before that happens, so this is a critical moment, and I want to thank everyone who has come here. We have an incredible group that has assembled here in person. 

We are going to hear from members of parliament. I’ll just note two of them, one is Congressman Chris Smith. He has been a leader in the US Congress in fighting against terrorism and antisemitism incited by UNRWA staff. He is the author of legislation to stop funding for UNRWA, it has already passed in the foreign affairs committee recently by a majority and we are hoping it will head to a vote in the House itself.

I want to acknowledge David Lega who is a leader in the European parliament on these issues. And hopefully I’ll get to see him in the European Parliament sometime soon. 

We have Assita Kanko from the European Parliament and Caroline Yadan from the French National Assembly, and did I miss some other members of parliament who are here in the room? A number of them will be participating by video. 

I’ll just say a word or two about where we are. We are meters away from the UN European headquarters. And the Israeli ambassador who I will introduce in a moment just stepped out of the opening ceremony of the 2024 Human Rights Council session, opened by Mr. Secretary General Guterres. 

The Human Rights Council was founded in 1946. Its first significant act was to create the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on December 10, 1948 at the Palais de Chaillot in Paris. In that document, in the preamble, it says, – this was 1948–  the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was created in response to “barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind.” That is the essence of what the United Nations was supposed to be about, what the Human Rights Council was supposed to be about. 

And we are just across the street from the International Committee of the Red Cross, the ICRC, which is the bastion of humanitarian law. 

We are at the center point of universal human rights and humanitarianism in this very spot.

And so we ask, are these human rights and humanitarian bodies, are they actually acting against barbarous acts? 

On October 7th, and we have Ayelet, whose son was tragically murdered as one of these barbarous acts, his lifeless body was abducted by an UNRWA worker.

And we will hear from Einat Wilf and Adi Schwartz that barbarism and terrorism among UNRWA staff, sadly, is not a bug, but a feature. 

And I want to ask Mr. Guterres, Mr. Guterres has said repeatedly, and he’s right next door, so I ask you, you have said repeatedly, UNRWA is irreplaceable. Well, we are going to hear from humanitarian experts, we are going to hear from Zlatko Zigic, who served at the UN migration agency. We are going to hear from Bonnie Glick who was the deputy administrator of USAID, from Jose Garson, an expert at the UN capital development fund, that, guess what, UNRWA is not irreplaceable. There are millions of refugees and other individuals who have humanitarian needs who are addressed by an array UN bodies that are not riddled and infested with terrorism. 

There are other alternatives, but sadly Mr. Secretary General you gave orders, we know that because it was reported by veteran UN reporter Colum Lynch in Devex last week that the Secretary General Guterres has urged the heads of UN principle relief agencies, including World Food Program and UNICEF to rebuff appeals by Israel and the US to undertake work currently carried by the world body’s beleaguered Palestinian refugee agency. 

In other words Secretary General Guterres, notwithstanding efforts by ambassador David Satterfield, the US humanitarian envoy and the USAID and the State Department to find other agencies that can do the work. Guterres has given them orders: “you are prohibited from picking up any of the services that Palestinians need, you are not allowed to do it.” So this is what we are facing. 

Mr. Guterres, you say repeatedly the talking points that are parroted by the apologists for UNRWA around the world. You say repeatedly that UNRWA does lifesaving work, it’s a lifeline. We have a video that my colleague Luis prepared, you’ll see dozens of individuals around the world parroting the talking point, UNRWA does lifesaving work, UNRWA is a lifeline, it’s irreplaceable. 

Really Mr. Guterres? 100,000 people in the last 24 hours, more than 100,000 people, when I asked them to support this conference, they rallied around the world and I have 100,000 names printed up here. 100,00 people have signed the petition.  And I’m just going to read a few words here.

Enough is enough, UNRWA must be dissolved and replaced. In the last few weeks it’s been revealed, again Mr. Guterres, you say that UNRWA does lifesaving work, it has been revealed that 12 UNRWA staff took part in the massacre of October 7th, and actually it’s another 30 at least that we have evidence were related, so about 42 at least. 1,200 staff, at least ,are part of terrorist groups. 3,000 belonged to this telegram chat group that celebrated the massacre of October 7th. 

We have an UNRWA headquarters in Gaza, underneath was a tunnel built by Hamas for another key asset, a computer server with espionage intelligence center built under UNRWA headquarters in Gaza with electric cables coming directly from the UNRWA headquarters. 

Philippe Lazzarini, Mr. Guterres, your head of UNRWA, he was asked about it. His response was, literally “UNRWA does not know what is under its headquarters in Gaza.” So even though 10 years ago, we know from reports that the parking lot was sinking, and everyone looked away, see no evil hear no evil. Nobody knew anything. Really? Not very credible. 

And we will hear from Ambassador Dennis Ross, the former US Peace Process Envoy and he’ll have a few words to say about that. 

Mr. Guterres, you said you were horrified about the terrorist attacks. In our petition, 100,000 people said you could not pretend to be horrified by this news because for the last decade, UN Watch sent countries and yourself warnings about UNRWA staff support for terrorism. The UN did nothing but to attack the messenger. The United Nations repeatedly and, UNRWA especially, attacked us, saying we are against refugees when we are doing the work that the UN failed to do, exposing their own teachers and schools principals who were regularly encouraging and promoting terrorism. You cannot pretend to be horrified, because for 10 years UN Watch has warned you. 

A few bad apples? Really it’s not a few bad apples. We documented hundreds and in every case when an UNRWA teacher glorified Hitler, glorified Hamas terrorist attacks in not once instance was there not one peer who said I’m shocked, you are such a bad apple, this is not what we do. On the contrary, all of them liked it. And when you go on the likes, other UNRWA teachers liked these messages. It’s not rotten apples, it’s rotten to the core. 

This is the moment that the international community has to decide if an agency that is supposed to be humanitarian is actually complicit in barbarism, it’s a moment where the funds are frozen and we can take action. That’s what this conference is about. Everyone will have their own views of what they want to say, I’m speaking for myself but I know I’m speaking for many. We are at this turning point and the next few weeks will be crucial. We are going to hear from our experts and victims today, and at the end of the conference, I will share where we will go forward and take action.

Thank you all for coming. 

Closing remarks: 

Thank you Congressman Ritchie Torres for your very powerful remarks. We heard earlier from Chairman Chris Smith from the Republican party, we now have your voice, as a leading voice, in the Democratic party. Indeed as Ambassador David Satterfield, the U.S. envoy on Humanitarian Affairs for the Middle East, really for Gaza, said, it is his understanding that from both parties, there is no longer a will to fund UNRWA. The opposite, there is a clear will not to fund UNRWA. We are seeing it in legislation. And again, in this event, we had both Republican and Democratic voices. And those who voted for Chris Smith’s bill in the House Foreign Affairs Committee were both Republicans and Democrats. This is very significant as we move forward. This was the last lawmaker that we heard from and now, I’ll just share with you a few remarks that I think express some of the views from our stakeholders today.

Where do we go forward from here? 

To wrap up, we are in a unique moment, as never before, a majority of donor states to UNRWA have frozen funding and they are saying they will reinstate it depending on these two inquiries, which are due in the next month or two. We know these inquiries are not exactly independent and it’s quite likely that they are going to say that everything is okay and to recommend funding be reinstated. But, we have this moment, and our summit today, the first-ever summit to explore alternatives to replace UNRWA, I believe we can identify five areas of action going forward:

     1. Members of parliament worldwide have met here and they have pledged to work together to unite in bringing in their fellow members of parliament to pressure governments to change their approach and look for alternatives beyond UNRWA.

2. Beyond petitions and appeals, there will be hearings in parliaments. I hope to participate in hearings in the European Parliament, Swiss Parliament, other parliaments as well.

    3. As follow-up to our summit, we need to monitor closely the work of these inquiries. OIOS, the Office of Internal Oversight is number one. The Second is the independent review panel headed by former French foreign minister, Catherine Colonna and three Scandinavian groups, each of which has in the past expressed some sort of bias against Israel or in favor of UNRWA. So there are very serious questions, but we have to look at the terms of reference and the work of these inquiries and monitor them carefully. 

     4. We need to develop working groups, from the participants, we have expertise and we could develop a program of action for governments to seriously consider alternatives to UNRWA, to help the people of Gaza, to make sure that their humanitarian needs are not compromised in any possible way, but to provide aid in a manner that is not designed to perpetuate the problem for years which the Swiss foreign minister in 2018, Ignazio Cassis said is “a perverse logic, UNRWA is part of the problem, not the solution.” So we need working groups to use our expertise and to help governments find a program of action.

     5. I believe that there is an avenue we need to explore about criminal accountability. When you see a terror tunnel right under the headquarters with cables directly linking the UNRWA headquarters to a key asset of Hamas, and you see numerous members of senior UNRWA managers – in 2017 there were two UNRWA managers who were elected to the Hamas politburo with Yayha Sinwar – we have to explore criminal accountability. What did people know? What did senior managers know about the UNRWA social worker who kidnapped the lifeless body of Yonatan Samerano? What did they know about the terror tunnels? What did they know about 42, at least, UNRWA officials who were part of the Hamas operations and about 1,200 to 1,400 who also are members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad? What did they know and when did they know it? That’s number one. What did they know about the terror tunnels, what did they know about the 42 at least UNRWA staff who are members of Hamas operations. We could look at criminal accountability whether it’s in Israel, the United States, the European Union, or even the international criminal court. Finally, it’s not just the managers who may have accountability, but the hundreds we have identified. In the UNRWA terrorgram, we identified a group of 3,000 UNRWA teachers. And previously, for the past 10 years, we have identified 200 UNRWA teachers and school principals, who routinely glorified Adolph Hitler, nazis, and Hamas terrorist attacks. In the United Kingdom, they recently, on January 19th, prescribed Hizb ut-Tahrir as a terror organization on the basis that this organization praised the October 7th terrorist attacks, the atrocities, and that this amounted to encouraging and promoting terrorism. The UNRWA school teachers and principals, and other employees that we identified, you can see their names on our website, UNWatch.org, there’s a section on UNRWA with all of our reports from the past 10 years, these named individuals, it’s not only a slap on the wrist for a social media neutrality violation, they can be held criminally accountable for encouraging and promoting terrorism. We know there may be immunity, but there may not be immunity for some of these criminal acts.

So I think these are 5 areas of action where we can move forward from this summit. I want to conclude by thanking all of you watching around the world. Once again in the past 24 hours, more than 100,000 of you signed our petition to call for an alternative to UNRWA, to support peace over terrorism, which I’m going to present to the Secretary-General. Thank you to everyone who showed your support. Your support around the world is the wind in our sails. If you want to stay informed about next steps, go to unwatch.org, sign up on our website, you can put in your email to subscribe to our newsletter. Follow us on social media, on Twitter @UNWatch or myself, @HillelNeuer, the same for Instagram and Facebook. Show your support, follow us, spread the information. We want to make the Middle East a better place. This began on October 6th, we were looking to the Abraham Accords and that is still a potential, so let’s do everything to support peace and reconciliation, fight the terrorists, and indeed let’s try to make this world a better place, and to explore alternatives beyond UNRWA. Thank you to all of our participants, all of our speakers, thank you to our incredible team who organized this event, and everyone else who worked so hard to make this event a possibility. Thank you very much.  

The post Hillel Neuer at the International Summit for a Future Beyond UNRWA appeared first on UN Watch.

Full remarks: 

Hillel, thank you so very much. It’s an honor to be on this panel with my fellow parliamentarians. Thank you for the great work that you are doing in your respective congresses or parliaments. I also want to say to Ayelet, I add my voice to everyone here in asking Secretary-General Guterres, meet with her, do it now. There’s an old saying, if you say you don’t have time, you haven’t stated a fact, you’ve stated a priority. And he needs to make this a priority now. When I first saw that video, I was moved to tears. And I just saw it again. This is barbaric, what this UNRWA person has done and what so many others who are part of UNRWA and Hamas have been doing. 

Special thanks to Hillel, for his extraordinary work in exposing and confronting pervasive antisemitism in the United Nations, including at the UN Human Rights Council, right behind us right now, and of course UNRWA, but other specialized agencies and the general assembly and elsewhere, and for demanding respect for the State of Israel and for Jews everywhere. 

In the past 9 months alone, Hillel has testified at three separate congressional hearings that I have chaired last June, then again in November, and then as he just mentioned, at a joint hearing with my good friend and colleague Chairman Brian Mast on January 30th .

Hillel is incisive, he is compelling, and he is a truth-teller. He told us that UN bodies routinely apply a double standard to Israel. We all know that, but it needs to be said. And I remember back in 20002, I had a hearing when we were pushing the idea of having a large meeting at the OSCE, I was the chairman of the Helsinki Commission, which is the OSCE part in the United States, and we had Natan Sharansky come and testify, one of the greatest. I’ve tried to get to see him with Frank Wolf in the 1980s, we went to Perm Camp and he had just been released. He is an amazing, awesome, human rights defender. Well he had a recipe or a definition that is not often realized by people here at the United Nations and that was the three “Ds” of antisemitism: demonization, delegitimization, and double-standard. And Hillel hit that out of the park in showing how the UN has done that everywhere here and in New York at the United Nations. 

He also talked about human rights officials like Navi Pillay and Francesca Albanese. Called them out and quoted them to show how brazenly antisemitic they are and continue to be in, and they are in high positions of power. And he also explained with chilling precision how UNRWA indoctrinates Palestinian youth. And really I would ask everyone watching this, reread the Hamas charter of 1988. I read major portions of it on the floor of the House. And even though I’ve read it many times, it got me anew, and grabbed me anew. Just how hate-filled it is. One of them is: “If you see a Jew and that Jewish person is behind a rock, that rock itself will cry out that there is a Jew here, come and kill this person.” It is perverse, and yet UNRWA embodies that in its teaching, especially for children. 

Earlier this month, the House Foreign Affairs Committee debated and passed my bill—H.R. 7122, the Stop Support for UNRWA Act— and the vote was 30 to 19.

The legislation—that now heads to the full House for debate and a vote — it prohibits any contributions to UNRWA or to the regular budget of the United Nations for the support of UNRWA.

In order to meet existing or future humanitarian needs in Gaza, it explicitly states that “Nothing in this Act may be construed to preclude the provision of humanitarian assistance through any agency or entity…” , but then it has a caveat, the Secretary of State certify that those entities or individuals don’t promote violence, terrorism, or antisemitism. So we vet them before US taxpayer money flows. 

Meanwhile the US. Senate has passed legislation in mid-February that appropriates humanitarian aid for Gaza estimated at $1.4 billion with the stipulation that. And it too, says clearly, unmistakably, no ifs, ands, or buts about it, no money to UNRWA. 

UNRWA is a corrupt, antisemitic, and terror-complicit agency. And everybody needs to say that. And everybody here at the United Nations, including at the UN Human Rights Council and every other agency need to recognize it. 

It radicalizes Palestinian children with antisemitic hate—it is a child soldier factory. I had hearings in the past, and I actually had some of our witnesses with the textbooks reading the hate that is filled and overflowing in those textbooks, it was amazing. They are teaching kids, from the youngest ages, to hate Jews. And we wonder why these child soldiers grow up, and when they are 12 or 13, and they are ready to kill any JKew that they come into contact with. 

We all know about the pause, I’m very concerned that the pause will be short-lived and the investigation appears to be woefully and unnecessarily limited in scope.  It remains to be seen whether the investigation will be in-depth and comprehensive – a top-to-bottom investigation into UNRWA’s direct role in promoting antisemitic hate and violence— to include all its staff and look at the books, look at everything. If they just narrowly look at the 12, I can tell you they are going to say, “they have been removed, everything is done, move on, and now resume the funding.” And that would be an egregious error. 

I also remain, like you do, very concerned about the UN investigations. Not just as to who is doing them, but they are going to the same thing, look at the 12 and then move on. There is a great article in the Wall Street Journal, it’s an op-ed by Peter Anthony Gallo, who worked for the UN’s office of Internal Oversight (OIOS). The headline was: The Sham Investigation of UNRWA— It’s likely to Whitewash the organization’s terrorist ties and could even force the offenders’ rehiring.

 And Ed just made so many good comments about how flawed those processes are and have been for decades. And now we are really about to see this happen all over again. 

Peter Gallo says “After spending four years as an investigator in that office, I can confidently say that its (the UN) investigation will amount to nothing…” and he went on to say that among other concerns, he argues, Secretary Guterres “has said that any UNRWA employees involved will ‘be held accountable, including through criminal prosecution.” – really? – “That’s commendable, he goes on to say, “but it’s meaningless. The U.N. doesn’t have prosecutorial authority or the ability to extradite people from one country to another, meaning any legal accountability would have to come from national authorities. Whatever the U.N. says, Hamas certainly wouldn’t send them from Gaza to sit for criminal trial in Israel.”

UNRWA’s deplorable record of antisemitism is nothing new. My good friend from Washington who is here today who just spoke from the USAID perspective has been calling it for at least a dozen years. And there’s been a multi-year cover up. I’ve tried for over 20. In 2003, I offered an amendment to a state department bill for 2003, 2004, that said no money for UNRWA. It passed the house, got killed in the Senate by inaction. And everything went on as usual. And the UNRWA lobbyists would descend on Capitol Hill, talk to members and staff, and say everything is fixed. “We can move on, turn that page.” And nothing could be further from the truth. So that goes back, and I really focused in that amendment on the textbooks cause I was appalled like all of you were about how bad they were. 

As was mentioned by Mr. Lindsay before, in 2018,  Trump rightfully suspended all US funding to UNRWA, as he should, based on the record. Unfortunately, it was filled by our friends in the European Union. 

Then since 2021, the Biden Administration resumed lavish support for UNRWA and we have spoken out. We have not been listened to. And we have donated more than 1 billion dollars. Years to date, U.S. taxpayers have spent a little over 7 billion dollars on UNRWA despite all of its horrific flaws.   

Finally, pursuant to UN Security Council Resolution 2720 (2023), Secretary General Guterres named Sigrid Kaag as the Senior Humanitarian and Reconstruction Coordinator for Gaza.  Among the job description is to “facilitate, coordinate, monitor and verify humanitarian relief consignments to Gaza.”

However, according to the Times of Israel, Sigrid Kaag is “an outgoing Dutch minister,…married to a senior PLO member and deputy minister under Yasser Arafat… she cast Netanyahu as a racist…”  – and most egregious in my opinion – she “ worked for UNRWA.”

So what kind of empathies will she have? And it does beg the question, should we be concerned about that? If we let it, it will be business as usual. And the factory that creates all these kids who learn to hate, any of you ever watch South Pacific, the great musical, there is a great song in there, You’ve got to be taught, you’ve got to be taught to hate. That’s what UNRWA does, that’s what Hamas does. And we will get no change and this cycle of violence will persist. This is the time. Thank you for your great leadership.  

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Adi Schwartz, Fellow at the Misgav Institute, co-author of “The War of Return”

Full remarks:

Thank you for having me, and I do agree this is a golden opportunity to put an end to UNRWA and we should act upon it. 

The problem with UNRWA is that it is a war agency. 

I know that Western donors, Western countries, and the media talk about UNRWA as an aid agency, and even now we’re talking about what alternatives we should find in order to provide aid to the Palestinians. But that’s simply not what UNRWA is about.

What UNRWA is actually doing is supporting the Palestinian narrative – which I’ll explain in a minute – providing generations of Palestinian fighters, combatants, willing to commit violence against Jews and against Israelis, and, in addition, giving terrorists like Hamas and, earlier, the PLO and other terror organizations all the time in the world to plan their terror attacks, while UNRWA is taking care of their social services, health, education, etc. They have all the time to sit underground and plan all those attacks.

What Palestinian narrative am I talking about?

The most basic and common Palestinian narrative about the conflict is that the entire land belongs to the Arabs, and that there is no place, there is no room for a Jewish state, no matter what its borders are. It was a crime against justice that it was created in 1948, and the only remedy, the only just solution to this conflict is simply to undo the State of Israel.

And in this context, what’s being planned – a return of refugees, as the Palestinians call it – means exactly that: putting an end to the State of Israel. 

The Palestinians are promoting the idea that millions of refugees – by now, of course, their descendants and descendants and descendants, fourth- and fifth-generation – who left their homes in 1948 have an internationally-recognized right to return to their homes inside the State of Israel. And this would be of course part of the way of how we remedy the injustice of 1948. Given the demographics, as you all know, and the number of Jews in Israel, such a massive return of refugees actually means that Israel is no longer the nation-state of the Jewish people, but becoming another Arab state.

So the idea is not only to bring the Arabs back to the land, but to bring the land back to the Arabs. 

Now how does UNRWA support this narrative? 

First of all, it tells the Palestinians that they have a right of return, which they do not. If you follow all the statements and proclamations of Lazzarini and other commissioners of UNRWA, they will say, day in, day out, that indeed the Palestinians have a right of return. UNRWA inflates the number of refugees artificially by more than 20 times. If we applied international standards, the number of Palestinian refugees would be perhaps 200,000. Instead, UNRWA counts 5.8 or 5.9 million – that’s 20 or 30 times more. UNRWA never crossed a name off of their lists. They never resettled even one refugee from 1949.

Just to make clear how it works: In the kingdom of Jordan, you have more than 2 million registered refugees. All of them have Jordanian citizenship. Now, all around the world, whether you are in Sudan, or in Bangladesh, or in the Balkans, or wherever, there are cessation clauses. Refugee status ends at some point. 

Not so with the Palestinians. The Palestinians can be – only them – both refugees and citizens of another country, which contradicts the entire point of being a refugee. And this is 2.2 million, it’s not an individual. The same is true for what is happening in what used to be called “Mandatory Palestine,” that is, Israel plus the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, or Judea and Samaria. Again, more than 2 million registered refugees are Palestinians. They live in Jenin, in Hebron, in Gaza, in Rafah, they are Palestinian, they live in Palestinian cities, they certainly consider themselves to be in Palestine, and at the same time they are refugees from Palestine. Again, this exists only in our case, You cannot be residing in Serbia, for example, and be a refugee from Serbia. The basic condition of being a refugee starts by being outside of your country. So they are in Palestine and refugees from Palestine. They know why they are refugees from Palestine, because they consider the entire area to be Palestine. 

Why does UNRWA do it? What’s the logic? Why do you inflate the number more than 20 times? This contradicts any common sense, unless you understand that UNRWA is actually a war agency; that its whole purpose, its mere existence, everything that it does is in order to continue the conflict against the State of Israel.

I just want to finish with a few quotes. This is not me saying this. This is how the Palestinians reacted after the suspension of funding, from the last two or three weeks. After the decision of so many western countries to suspend funding, this is what the Palestinians had to say. For example, the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah – and this is the “moderate” PA – Mohammad Shtayyeh said in a press conference that “UNRWA embodies the accumulated memories of the suffering of the Palestinian refugees. Throughout its years of activity, UNRWA has been a source of hope for the Palestinian refugees for returning to their homes.” Again, not aid, not education, not healthcare. This is what UNRWA is about. 

Fatah, again, in a statement issued on January 28th: “The refugee issue will remain the crux of the Palestinian cause.”

Another quote – an author from the al-Quds newspaper. Not in Gaza, he’s not intimidated, he’s not controlled by Hamas, so he can say whatever he wants, and he says the following: “One of the goals of UNRWA is to ensure the return of the Palestinian refugees and their descendants to their original homes” – meaning, inside Israel. “For the Palestinians, UNRWA was never an end in itself, but rather a means to achieve their goals. This is the main goal for which UNRWA was established: To actualise the return of the refugees. Many of the services that this organization once provided have diminished and decreased, and many refugees no longer benefit from this international organization. But the fact of its existence has an international, political, moral and legal impact on the refugees’ historical right of return.”

So this is what UNRWA is about. The bottom line is that, as long as UNRWA exists, the war continues. 

And this is why it should be ended.

Thank you.

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