As the scandal over the UNRWA and its operations as little more than a front office for Hamas grows, more and more disturbing revelations are emerging.
This is very, very far from a supposed “few bad apples”. It’d be harder to find a “good apple” — if not next to impossible.
At least one in ten UNRWA staff are accused of being, not just sympathisers, but actual Hamas or Islamic Jihand militants. At least half are close family members of Hamas terrorists. Of the remainder: that they knew nuzzink of their colleagues’ jihadist operations beggars belief. It’s a bit difficult, after all, not to notice the caches of rockets and Kalashnikovs cluttering the office. It would take a superhuman effort for those UNRWA staffers handing out the organisation’s “textbooks” in UNRWA-run schools not to notice the bright, colourful illustrations of “How to Kill Jews”.
So, no, Winston Peters, it’s not a case of “a few rotten apples”. It’s a whole barrel of rotten fruit, with a goodly number of very nasty snakes slithering around in the mush.
The dossier said one of the 11 is a school counselor who helped his son abduct a woman during the Hamas infiltration in which Israel says 1,200 people were killed and 253 kidnapped.
Another, an UNRWA social worker, is accused of unspecified involvement in the transfer to Gaza of a slain Israeli soldier’s corpse, of coordinating the movements of pick-up trucks used by the raiders and of weapons supplies.
A third Palestinian in the dossier is accused of taking part in a rampage in the Israeli border village Beeri, one-tenth of whose residents were killed. A fourth is accused of participating in an attack on Reim, site of both an army base that was overrun and a rave where more than 360 revelers died.
Be’eri, it might be remembered, was the site of some of the most appalling atrocities of October 7. Almost all of the one in ten residents of Be’eri killed were tortured. Babies were shot in their mothers’ arms. Despite the willful denials of some, babies were indeed beheaded. Women, from pre-teen girls to pensioners were repeatedly raped, to the point that their pelvises were crushed, and mutilated. A woman’s breast was sliced off and kicked around the street like a football. Women were raped even after they were dead. A pregnant woman was gutted and her foetus stabbed, still inside her.
UN staffers took part in all of that.
That’s not all UN employees did. Far from it.
Also in the list of 12 men are an UNRWA teacher accused of arming himself with an anti-tank rocket, another teacher accused of filming a hostage and the manager of a shop in an UNRWA school accused of opening a war-room for Islamic Jihad.
Japan Times
The IDF has found tunnels located in UNRWA-run schools. For at least ten years, Hamas has been using UNRWA schools to stockpile weapons, and as staging areas to fire rockets. The UNRWA tried to keep these facts secret, refusing to publicise them on its website or its Twitter feed, and those of its spokespeople.
This was, it might be noted, during the time former NZ PM Helen Clark was head of the body responsible for the UNRWA.
But dozens of UNRWA staff have repeatedly used social media to spread anti-Semitic hate. Dozens more openly praised the October 7 massacres.
“A few bad apples”? Not bloody likely.
The only moral choice the New Zealand government can make is to immediately cease all funding for the UNRWA. For good.
No matter how hard Helen Clark cries about it.
