Catastrophe - Dick Morris [67]
September 2002: Nahd Attala, a UNRWA official in Gaza, reveals that he had used his UNRWA car to transport armed Fatah members heading off on a mission to carry out a missile attack against Jewish settlements. Nahd also used an UNRWA car to carry a twelve-kilogram explosive charge for his brother-in-law, a Fatah member.
December 2002: UNRWA facilities in the West Bank and Gaza were reportedly used as meeting places and weapons dumps by Palestinian terrorists.
September 2003: Three UNRWA employees were found guilty of terrorist activities (including firebombing a public bus) by an Israeli court. After the trial, Israel detained at least sixteen other UNRWA staffers for security infractions.
May 2004: Armed Palestinians were captured on film using UNRWA medical vehicles to transport terrorists in Gaza.
May 2008: The headmaster of an UNRWA boys’ school in Gaza, Awad al-Qiq, was killed in an Israeli rocket attack. Al-Qiq led a dual life: Beyond his work at the Rafah Prep Boys’ School, he was also chief rocket maker for Islamic Jihad. The Islamic Jihad identified him as “chief leader of the engineering [i.e., bomb-making] unit.” Jihadi imagery was found in his home, and at his funeral the flag of the Islamic Jihad was draped over his body. The Jihad marked his death by firing rockets at Israel.250
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According to Congressman Mark Kirk (R-IL), in December 2007 UNRWA confirmed that it gave money to families of suicide bombers.251
In 2002, Israeli troops entered UNRWA camps after repeated terrorist attacks. Arlene Kushner, a reporter for the Israel Resource News Agency, reports that the troops “discovered there small-arms factories, explosive laboratories, and suicide bombing cells.”252
Kushner also reports that “So pervasive is this situation in the camps that Hamas has gained control of the UNRWA workers’ union. In the Gaza Strip, the 2003 elections for union representatives saw Hamas-affiliated candidates gain substantial majorities in all union sectors, securing control of all seats in the teachers’ sector. Moreover, Hamas candidates fully constitute the union’s executive committee.”253
How, then, are we supposed to reconcile our hard-earned position as leaders of the international war on terrorism with the fact that we provide 30 percent of the budget for UNRWA, with its hand-in-glove policy with terrorists? (The European Union contributes 55 percent of UNRWA’s budget. Canada contributes 5 percent.)254
Recently, UNRWA showed its true colors by delivering a letter to U.S. Senator John Kerry during a trip to Gaza—a letter that came from the Hamas foreign ministry!
During the recent Israeli invasion of Gaza, UNRWA served as a regular megaphone for Hamas propaganda. For example, on January 7, 2009, Christopher Gunness, a spokesman for UNRWA, told the Democracy Now radio program that the Israelis had attacked a UNRWA school in Gaza. At first he said that there were “thirty confirmed fatalities and fifty-five injured, including fifteen critically.” Later he said that ten more people had died during the night. The victims, he said, “came—frightened, terrified, vulnerable—to our center. They were coming to what they thought was a neutral United Nations shelter, and then the rest is history—forty people killed.”255
The only problem with Gunness’s story is that it never happened. Three civilians and between eight and ten Hamas gunmen were killed near the school when an Israeli military unit was attacked by a Hamas cell. No shell ever hit the school, and no one in the school was injured. As the Jerusalem Post reported, the “UN issued a revised report…admitting that as the result of a ‘clerical error’ it was mistaken when it reported that the compound itself was shelled.” Gunness later denied ever saying that the shell had hit the school.256
The UNRWA uses its Web site to appeal for funds, listing banks that will receive funds from