We’re being bamboozled
With regard to “Trump cuts UNRWA funding in half” (January 17), how long are we going to permit ourselves to be bamboozled by UNRWA when, according to Dr. Daniel Pipes, 99% percent of “Palestine refugees” are fake? In his January 10 blog entry, Dr. Pipes writes: “And even if no one replaced US donations, denying UNRWA money does not get to the heart of the problem, which lies not in its sponsored activities but in its perpetuating and expanding population of “Palestine refugees” in three unique, even bizarre ways: allowing this status to be transferred without limit from generation to generation; maintaining the status after refugees have acquired a nationality (such as Jordanian); and assigning the status to residents of the West Bank and Gaza, who live in the putative Palestinian homeland. These tricks allowed UNRWA artificially to expand the refugee population from 600,000 in 1949 to 5.3 million now; an accurate count of real refugees now alive numbers around 20,000.”
MLADEN ANDRIJASEVIC
Beersheba
There is absolutely no logistical or bureaucratic reason that the United Nations’ primary refugee arm, the UNHCR, cannot assume UNRWA’s responsibilities.
UNHCR’s mandate is to protect and provide assistance to refugees and help them be either repatriated, settled where they already are or resettled in a third country. That is a goal that is both noble and realistic. In addition, the organization does not transfer refugee status from one generation to the next.
I’m somewhat willing to believe UNRWA if it says Hamas stored weapons in its facilities or used those weapons in close proximity to its facilities without its consent. (Without its knowledge would be going a bit far, for rockets are hard to miss down in one’s own basement.) But its generosity in transferring refugee status from one generation to the next and its policy of imbuing in its clients a serious sense of hope solely for their return should make donor nations sit up and take notice.
Perhaps the same people who laud UNRWA should be out there protesting against UNHCR for being so stingy. ARI BEN-SENDER Jerusalem