Catastrophe - Dick Morris [69]
Perhaps UNRWA’s most direct involvement with terrorism is through the schools it owns and operates in Gaza. The schools’ faculty is notoriously pro-terrorist. For example, Suheil al-Hindi, a UNRWA teachers’ representative, spoke approvingly of suicide bombings in Gaza in 2003. “Instead of a condemnation,” one report noted, “al-Hindi received a promotion and was subsequently elected to the UNRWA’s clerks union.”266
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SHINING GRADUATES: TERRORISTS WHO GOT THEIR EDUCATION AT THE UNRWA SCHOOLS
Said Sayyam, the Hamas minister of interior and civil affairs, was a teacher in the UNRWA Gaza schools for twenty-three years and headed the teachers’ union.
Former Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniyeh is among those who graduated from the UNRWA secondary school, graduating at the top of his class.
At least forty-six terrorist operatives were students in UNRWA schools, including Ibrahim Maqadama, who helped create the military structure of Hamas.267
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The Jewish Policy Center also reports that “there have also been widespread reports of terrorism from UNRWA-supervised facilities, including sniper attacks from UNRWA-run schools, bomb and arms factories in UNRWA camps, the transport of terrorists to their target zones in UNRWA ambulances, and even UNRWA employees directly tied to terrorist attacks against civilians.”268
According to reports in the New York Times and other venues, UNRWA has “allowed terrorist groups to use their schools as ‘summer camps’ [for] 25,000 Palestinian children.” But instead of horseback riding and swimming, these kids spent their summer receiving “paramilitary training, including instructions on how to prepare Molotov cocktails and roadside bombs.”269
This is contemporary education—courtesy of the United Nations.
And when these bomb makers get it wrong—as they did when the homes of six Palestinian families on UNRWA’s registry were “destroyed during bomb-making activities, UNRWA concluded there was not enough evidence to deny them benefits under the terrorist exclusion law.”270
But a report from the Global Research in International Affairs Center raises an even more troubling issue: Does UNRWA want to solve the Palestinian refugee problem, or does it want to perpetuate it?
As the center points out, “UNRWA’s job is to keep Palestinian refugees in suspended animation—and at low living standards—until they achieve the goal set for them by…Hamas: Israel’s extinction. In the meantime, their suffering and anger is maintained as a weapon to encourage them toward violence and intransigence.”271
The center notes that “UNRWA schools become hotbeds of anti-Western, anti-American, and anti-Semitic indoctrination, recruiting offices for terrorist groups. UNRWA’s services are dominated by radicals who staff and subsidize radical groups while intimidating anyone from voicing a different line. UNRWA facilities are used to store and transport weapons, actually serving as military bases.”272
In fact, the hypocrisy runs deeper. As the center points out, UNRWA is “the exact opposite of other refugee relief operations.” Whereas other such agencies seek to resettle refugees, UNRWA is “dedicated to blocking resettlement” to keep alive the “thirst for revenge that inspires violence.”273
There can be no doubt that the $900 million in new U.S. aid to UNRWA—to say nothing of the more than $4 billion from the international community—will end up helping Hamas. Whether simply by repairing and governing Gaza while Hamas turns its attention to rocket launchings into Israel or through direct training, indoctrination, and sheltering of terrorists, UNRWA is a key to the survival of Hamas in the Middle East.
Whatever the intentions of its founders, UNRWA is no longer an impartial organization. Any belief that U.S. funds channeled through it will not reach Hamas terrorists is a dangerous delusion. The U.S. government should be commended by all nations for its work