One Republican priority should not fall by the wayside: stripping the U.N. Relief and Works Agency of funding.
One Republican priority should not fall by the wayside: stripping the U.N. Relief and Works Agency of funding.
B efore the 118th Congress expires, lawmakers must pass a stopgap government funding bill that is likely to preserve existing funding levels through to next March. The measure will provide the next GOP-led Congress with space to hammer out reconciliation bills dealing with the Republican Party’s many priorities — from extending the 2017 tax cuts, to border security, to domestic energy exploration and exploitation. But even though cobbling together a provisional spending bill in the few days left before lawmakers flee Washington is a chaotic process, one Republican priority should not fall by the wayside: stripping the U.N. Relief and Works Agency of funding.
Earlier this year, U.S. funding for the organization that allegedly handles Palestinian refugee affairs — and only Palestinian refugee affairs — was withdrawn until at least next March amid scandalous revelations surrounding the degree to which the organization had been infiltrated by Hamas operatives. Today, House Republicans are lobbying their colleagues to extend that funding pause before the end of the year.
As Jewish Insider reported, Republican Ronnie Jackson and eight of his GOP colleagues published an open letter calling on Congress to “finally do away with the agency that is responsible for so much suffering and focus more on constituting more effective aid distribution mechanisms.” These Republicans correctly note that the U.N. has not only declined to pursue any reforms to that particularly corrupt agency, but that Turtle Bay has heedlessly defended UNRWA as it is presently constituted.
“Any UNRWA employee who was involved in acts of terror will be held accountable, including through criminal prosecution,” UNRWA commissioner-general Philippe Lazzarini insisted in January following the discovery that his agency’s staffers supported and even participated in the October 7 massacre. But despite the firing of nine UNRWA workers in August, the agency has not reformed itself. Nor has it engaged in a serious reckoning with the conditions that allowed it to be hijacked by terrorists. Indeed, in defending itself against a civil suit alleging UNRWA involvement in the 10/7 attacks, U.N. functionaries sought immunity for its officials “including UNRWA,” which “enjoys immunity from legal process, as do United Nations officials, including those serving with UNRWA,” said a spokesman for U.N. secretary-general Antonio Guterres. On that score, Attorney General Merrick Garland sided with the United Nations.
Indeed, the U.N. has stood firmly behind its terrorist-adjacent “relief” organization. Guterres maintains that UNRWA is all that prevents a “complete disaster” in Gaza from becoming a “catastrophe.” Without the organization, U.N. Human Rights Office spokesman Jeremy Laurence warned, “The delivery of food, healthcare, education, among other things, to most of Gaza’s population, would grind to a halt.” In late October, the United Nations Security Council “affirmed that no organization can replace or substitute UNRWA’s capacity and mandate to serve Palestinian refugees and civilians in urgent need of life-saving humanitarian assistance,” the U.N.’s press arm reported. Indeed, Lazzarini recently mourned, the backlash against UNRWA, which is largely limited to the United States and Israel, represents the “darkest moment” in the agency’s 75-year history. Apparently, learning that your staffers were complicit in the mass murder of Jews pales in comparison to the threat to the organization’s bottom line.
Democrats and center-left governments across the world share Lazzarini’s misplaced priorities. In September, Democratic representatives Pramila Jayapal, André Carson, and Jan Schakowsky introduced a bill aimed at restoring U.S. funding for UNRWA on the grounds (according to Jayapal’s office) that Israel is engineering a famine in the Strip. “Gaza isn’t starving. It’s being starved,” said one refugee advocate quoted in Jayapal’s press release. U.S. allies like Great Britain, New Zealand, and others appear to agree with the shallow interpretation of UNRWA as a valuable enterprise because the organization has the word “relief” in the name. But UNRWA isn’t the only group operating on the ground in Gaza that has been subverted by Hamas terrorists.
The charity NGO World Central Kitchen recently dismissed 62 members of its Gaza-based staff following an investigation that confirmed Israeli allegations about its employees’ involvement in the 10/7 slaughter. Likewise, some international media outlets were compelled to sever ties with the local “stringers” it hires to cover events in Gaza, some of whom were implicated in the attacks. The problem these organizations are struggling with is endemic to Gaza because, before October 7, 2023, Hamas’s totalitarian regime had infiltrated every aspect of the society over which it ruled. To hire a Gazan meant working — directly or otherwise — with Hamas. That problem will persist until the illegitimate terrorist group sovereign in the Gaza Strip is replaced with a responsible civilian governing authority.
If the U.N. agency’s proximity to terrorists has caused its functionaries any discomfort, they’re being coy about it. It is, therefore, incumbent on the civilized world to starve the organization of funding until either it commits to a wholesale reformation or the font of terrorist operatives that glut these international organizations is choked off.
“Terror is woven into the fabric of UNRWA, and there is no hope for peace in the Middle East if UNRWA is allowed to continue to operate,” the GOP lawmakers’ letter closed. Indeed. Those who seek a genuinely brighter future for the Palestinians who languish under this oppressive terrorist regime should hope to see Hamas’s abettors in the international community marginalized. The fact that this elementary logic seems to elude the U.N. tells you all you need to know about the U.N.