.
"U.S. tax dollars fund Unrwa officials now lobbying in Washington
to obtain yet more money for an agency entwined with the
rocket-launching, tunnel-digging rulers of Gaza."
8/8/14, "The U.N. Handmaiden of Hamas," Claudia Rosett, Wall St. Journal, AIM guest column
"The relief agency in Gaza, financed in part by the U.S., has become a patron of Palestinian grievance.
On Wednesday, as a truce held between Israel and the Hamas terrorist
group that rules the Gaza Strip, United Nations Secretary-General Ban
Ki-moon briefed the U.N. General Assembly. “The senseless cycle of
suffering” must end, he said, asking: “Do we have to continue like this:
build, destroy, and build, and destroy?”
For answers, the secretary-general would do well to look at the
U.N.’s own main agency in Gaza, the United Nations Relief and Works
Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, better known as Unrwa.
Bankrolled chiefly by the United States and the European Commission,
with headquarters split among Gaza, Jerusalem and Amman, Jordan, the
agency is one of the U.N.’s most perverse, destructive creations. In
Gaza it essentially functions as Hamas’s handmaiden.
During the clashes of recent weeks as Israel sought to stop rocket
attacks by Hamas and to destroy the organization’s terror tunnels, Unrwa
has loomed large on the public stage—with a pronounced Palestinian
tilt. Its commissioner-general, Pierre Krahenbuhl, has publicly
condemned Israel, accusing the Israelis of “serious violation of
international law.” On Al Jazeera television, the agency’s spokesman,
Christopher Gunness, has wept for the Palestinians.
Yet the U.N. representatives in Gaza helped cater the conflict and
are already setting the table for the next round. Officially, Unrwa is a
strictly humanitarian agency, providing Palestinian refugees in
Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and the West Bank, as well as Gaza, with
“assistance and protection” in the form of schools, hospitals,
construction, loans, jobs and other help. By the agency’s own account,
in its 2014-15 budget “the core services UNRWA provides are comparable
in nature and scope to those provided by a local or national
government.”
But Gaza under Hamas is a place with only two basic industries: aid
and terrorism. These are much entwined, and not solely because Hamas
controls Unrwa’s staff unions in Gaza, where in 2012 a Hamas-affiliated
slate swept 25 of 27 seats. In effect the U.N. group subsidizes Hamas.
Among U.N. agencies in the Middle East, Unrwa is the largest employer,
with a regular budget for 2014 of $731 million, and a total budget that,
with emergency appeals, tops $1 billion.
The agency has roughly 30,000 staff on its payroll, almost all
Palestinian. Some 12,500 work in Gaza, home to 1.2 million
Unrwa-registered refugees, who account for about two-thirds of Gaza’s
population. The U.N. agency’s welfare programs relieve Hamas of many of
the costs of servicing the enclave it controls as its launchpad for
terror.
With the agency handling household chores, Hamas—especially since its
bloody takeover of Gaza in 2007, ousting the Palestinian Authority’s
Fatah—has found the time and resources to amass rocket arsenals (Unrwa
last month reported finding rockets stashed in three of its vacant
schools), to bombard Israel (sometimes in close proximity to Unrwa
premises), and to build miles of concrete-reinforced tunnels extending
into Israel for terrorist attacks. Israel, in its counteroffensive, has
been accused by the U.N. of deadly strikes on Unrwa schools serving as
shelters.
How did it come to this? Created by the U.N. General Assembly in 1949,
Unrwa began operations in 1950 as an emergency jobs and aid program for
Palestinian refugees. It was supposed to be temporary but has been
repeatedly renewed. The agency has now carried on for 64 years, vastly
expanding its budget, programs and refugee rolls.
Unrwa is unusual among U.N. agencies in ways that render it especially
unaccountable, even by U.N. standards. All other refugees world-wide
fall under the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. Only the
Palestinians have their own dedicated U.N. refugee agency, offering
special access to the perquisites of the U.N. logo, stage and
fundraising.
Almost all other U.N. agencies report to an executive board, allowing at
least some chance of functional oversight. Unrwa reports directly to
the entire 193-member General Assembly, where responsibility is broadly
dispersed and easily avoided. According to a paper in 2010 by the
agency’s own chief of legal affairs, Lance Bartholomeusz, Unrwa enjoys
the added flexibility of having no clearly defined mission: “its mandate
is not conveniently stated in one place and must be derived from all
other relevant resolutions and requests.”
Thus unencumbered, Unrwa has ensured its own survival by transforming
itself into the patron of Palestinian grievance, conferring refugee
status down the generations, an unusual practice. The agency’s website
reports that since 1950 its roster of registered refugees has grown from
an original 750,000 to 5.3 million—a sevenfold increase, all eligible
for the Unrwa dole. For the Palestinians, this has been ruinous,
fostering within an otherwise enterprising culture a crippling sense of
entitlement and dependency.
The agency does face one hurdle: Its funding comes almost entirely
from voluntary contributions. But hundreds of millions roll in every
year from the U.S., which is the largest donor (contributing $294
million in 2013), followed by the European Commission ($216 million).
According to State Department historical data, the U.S. since Unrwa’s
inception has given the agency funds totaling $4.9 billion (closer to $7
billion in constant 2014 dollars).
In 2011 the agency opened an office in Washington run by two former
U.S. government insiders: Matthew Reynolds, previously the State
Department’s assistant secretary for legislative affairs, and Chris
McGrath, previously a media-events director for Sen. Harry Reid.
The job descriptions include representing the U.N. agency’s interests
to the State Department and monitoring Congress on a daily basis to
yield an “advocacy strategy dedicated to optimizing Unrwa’s relations
with Congress.”
Thus U.S. tax dollars fund Unrwa officials now lobbying in Washington
to obtain yet more money for an agency entwined with the
rocket-launching, tunnel-digging rulers of Gaza. Mr. Reynolds, reached
by phone this week, said he doesn’t answer questions from the media.
Christopher Gunness, the agency spokesman, did not respond to repeated
queries.
With this week’s truce between Israel and Hamas appearing to hold as
the weekend neared, Unrwa is ready for what comes next. The organization
has embarked on a $187 million flash appeal to rebuild Gaza. Thus will
Hamas be spared the expense of cleaning up after the warfare it
provoked."
===========
"This article was originally published in The Wall Street Journal." via Lucianne
.
Friday, August 8, 2014
Since 2011 U.S. tax dollars fund Beltway lobbyists who raise money for Hamas rockets, lobbyists are part of UN Palestinian aid agency UNRWA which is also funded by chump US taxpayers. Unit operates as autonomous country, little or no oversight-Claudia Rosett, WSJ
Labels:
US taxpayers fund Hamas rockets
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment