Catastrophe - Dick Morris [68]
In 2004, the Treasury Department enacted sanctions against the Commercial Bank of Syria, charging that it had laundered money from the United Nations’ deeply corrupt oil-for-food program in Iraq. The department also noted that the bank had handled many other transactions “that may be indicative of terrorist financing and money laundering,” including two accounts “that reference a reputed financier for Usama bin Laden.”258
In 2006, Under-Secretary of the Treasury Stuart Levey alleged, terrorists had used the bank to transfer substantial funds. “As a state-owned entity with inadequate money laundering and terrorist financing controls, the Commercial Bank of Syria poses a significant risk of being used to further the Syrian Government’s continuing support for international terrorist groups,” Levey said. The clients included the terrorist groups Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and Hamas.259
Yet, despite UNRWA’s terrible record of collaboration with Hamas, the United States is proceeding to ask its taxpayers to shell out for the so-called relief agency.
In announcing the U.S. contribution, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton went to great pains to say that “we have worked with the Palestinian Authority to install safeguards that will ensure that our funding is used only where, and for whom, it is intended, and does not end up in the wrong hands”—that is, in the hands of Hamas.260 But since the funds will be under the control of UNRWA, it’s hard to see how they can possibly be kept in the right hands!
Indeed, even if the Palestinian Authority—rather than Hamas—controls the funds, that can hardly be a solution, as the PA’s hands are far from clean. Reporting on one recent Arab League conference, Jonathan D. Halevi of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs noted that “a considerable portion of the aid raised for the Palestinian Authority” at the meeting would go “to support terrorists held in Israeli jails and their families.”261 The Palestinian Authority pays $200 per month to families of prisoners held in Israeli jails for terrorist attacks, to a total of $40 million per year. The aid continues even after their release. Halevi observes, “This aid serves as a form of social security for current and former prisoners and sends a message that their terrorist activities are officially sanctioned by the Palestinian Authority.”262
UNRWA has been in business for fifty-seven years, providing food, medicine, and social services to Palestinian refugees. But as the Jewish Policy Center notes, “it is directly providing financial and material support to the Hamas terrorist organization.”263
UNRWA employs 23,000 local Palestinians in its relief work. Only one hundred of its staff members are international UN personnel from other countries. Its local-friendly hiring policy separates UNRWA from the policies of the UN High Commission on Refugees and UNICEF (United Nations International Children’s Fund), which do not employ local people who are also the recipients of agency services.264
At the very least, UNRWA relieves Hamas of the need to spend any of its money on providing services for the Gaza Strip, which it rules. UNRWA takes care of feeding, clothing, housing, and providing education and medical care in the Gaza—allowing Hamas to spend all its money on making war against Israel.
But Yoni Fighel, a former Israeli military governor in the Palestinian territories, says that UNRWA goes much further. He says that “UNRWA workers are permitted to openly affiliate with terrorist groups.” He notes that “as long as UNRWA employees are members of Fatah, Hamas, or PFLP [Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine], they are going to pursue