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Pull the Plug on UNRWA

(Philadelphia Jewish Exponent) Jonathan S. Tobin - The administration is sticking to its hard line against sending a cent to Hamas. And Congress is poised to enact aid restrictions that may act as a break on any State Department impulse to weaken on the issue. But the U.S. and EU will be diverting a lot of the money that supported the PA kleptocracy to humanitarian aid. That way, it is reasoned, innocent Palestinians won't be forced to suffer from the crimes of their new masters. The only problem is that the humanitarian group that will receive the lion's share of the aid is one of the most thoroughly politicized and terrorist-infiltrated organizations in the world: the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). Unlike virtually every other refugee aid group, UNRWA's primary mission has never been to help the Palestinians deal with the reality of the post-1948 world. Resettling the Palestinians wasn't the point. UNRWA exists to keep the Palestinians alive exactly where they are, so they can serve as justification for continued conflict with Israel. UNRWA's employees are uniformly Palestinian, and many are members of Palestinian terror factions such as Fatah and Hamas. In the recent Palestinian election, a number of UNRWA workers were Hamas parliamentary candidates. The only reason the descendants of the original Palestinian refugees are still in these camps is because UNRWA and the UN have let the Arab world get away with keeping them there, rather than forcing them to recognize that the State of Israel is not going to disappear. Americans have no excuse for continuing to be complicit in this deception. Thirty percent of the agency's $400 million budget comes courtesy of American taxpayers. If the pain and grief that UNRWA helps inflict on the region is to be stopped, both the White House and Congress must stop buying into the myth of UNRWA's lies.
2006-03-17 00:00:00
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