National Post (National Edition)
UN report didn't clear UNWRA
While anti-Israel protest encampments amass on American campuses, particularly at Columbia University, where demonstrators chant, “Hamas we love you,” the United Nations tried to slip a report about the United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA) between the cracks. Its objective was to downplay UNRWA's failure to remain neutral in Gaza by supposedly allowing its infrastructure there to be used by the terror group Hamas.
Released April 22, the report was the product of a weeks-long investigation by a UN-appointed review group into the neutrality of UNRWA. They began their work after Israel levelled accusations that a dozen UNRWA staff members were directly involved in the Oct. 7 terrorist attack, and that many others supported Hamas. The final report doesn't address the involvement of UNRWA employees in the attack, but it does make recommendations to improve the neutrality of the aid organization.
The timing of the report's release, which the media quickly used to vindicate UNRWA after some of its staff were accused of terrorism by Israel, should have raised a red flag.
Just as Israeli Jews were sitting down at their Seder tables to celebrate Passover, they were hit over the head by a frontal media assault. Headlines blared using only portions of the report to reprimand Israel for not providing evidence of UNRWA staff participating in the Oct. 7 massacre. Israel rarely co-operates with the oftenbiased UN committees sent to castigate the Jewish state.
As is often the case these days, journalists pick out the content that most validates their prevailing opinion. Had they read the report thoroughly, they would have picked up on the report's emphasis that “neutrality-related issues persist.” In other words, UNRWA is not neutral, though it's supposed to be. There have been “instances of staff publicly expressing political views” and “host countries with problematic content being used in some UNRWA schools.”
UNRWA itself, says the report, admits to finding in a review of textbooks “issues of concern to UN values, guidance, or position on the conflict.” To its credit, the report concludes that “even if marginal, these issues constitute a grave violation of neutrality.”
The investigative committee found that “among the various issues, recurrent ones were the use of historical maps in a non-historical context, e.g., without labelling Israel; naming Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine; naming cities in Israel as Palestinian cities; the use of the word Zionist (e.g., `Zionist occupation' referring to Israel).” If we are to believe that only 3.85 per cent of Palestinian textbooks contain “issues,” that would still imply that thousands of Palestinians have been indoctrinated to hate Israel.
The investigative committee's report about UNRWA should make any donor country, including Canada, rethink its funding.
“The presence of even a small fraction of problematic content in textbooks, supplemental material, and teaching content remains a serious issue,” it reads. “More work needs to be undertaken between UNRWA and the Palestinian Authority to pursue the replacement of problematic content and to avoid the promotion of discrimination and incitement to hatred and violence and the spreading of antisemitic views that contradict UN values and UNESCO standards.”
In Gaza, Israel discovered what had long been suspected: Hamas was using UNRWA facilities including its headquarters and its schools as bases of operations and military storage centres. UNRWA staff deny any knowledge of these findings, insisting they were unaware that tunnels were dug below their facilities, electric cables were run from their building underground, and rockets were stored inside and in the ground below school classrooms. No one at UNRWA seems to have learned that their headquarters sheltered a massive Hamas data centre in the ground below, either.
The UN investigative report politely addresses this complicity with terror.
“UNRWA's facilities have sometimes been misused for political or military gains, undermining its neutrality,” it reads. “If the prevention of and response to the political misuse of UNRWA installations has been efficient, the agency has had more difficulty appropriately addressing the use of its installations for military purposes. Preventive measures, enhanced monitoring, and transparent reporting are necessary to address this issue effectively.”
In fact, the UN agency requires so much maintenance that the advisory committee believes oversight and “stronger governance structures” are critical for it to meet neutrality protocols, as is support from the international community.
Even while the international media ignored these important facts in the report, governments like Canada that have resumed funding to the agency must reconsider their decision based on these findings. Funding UNRWA is the problem in the Middle East crisis, not the solution.