Study Shows UN Refugee Agency Aids Terror, Not Peace

BY MICHAEL WIDLANSKI for IMRA 31 July 2011

[This article can be reproduced] The UN agency specializing in aid to Palestinian refugees has become a

chronically corrupt organization whose funds are siphoned off by terror

groups, especially in Gaza, according to a new series of studies by an

American think tank. Of the 1.2-billion-dollar annual budget of UNRWA (United Nations

Relief and Works Agency), about 550-million dollars in education funds is

going through the hands of HAMAS, declared researchers at the Center for

Near East Policy Research. "When HAMAS takes over the UNRWA teachers union, it gets their money,"

asserted Dr. Mordechai Kedar. He said this was probably about 50 million

dollars a year from the UNWRA budget, half of which is financed by American

and European tax payers. About 268-million dollars of UNRWA money comes from

the US, and a similar amount from the European Union according to Arlene

Kushner, who has been studying UNRWA for more than a decade. Hamas control of UNRWA is not just a financial matter, said Kedar, an

Arab affairs expert at Bar Ilan University and an-ex-IDF intelligence

officer. He stressed that the terror group controlling Gaza has converted

UNRWA school programs into recruiting agents for suicide bombers. The researchers backed their findings with a 35-minute documentary film

entitled "Palestinian Refugee Policy: From Despair to Hope." The film showed

just how deeply Hamas has penetrated the UN agency, using school posters and

interviews with UNRWA teachers to highlight how the ideal of killing

Israelis�rather than working for peace�had come to dominate a UN agency. The researchers said UNRWA had a 60-year record of failing to help

Palestinians, and, instead was perpetuating their refugee status for its own

bureaucratic needs, continuing to control 59 refugee "camps" in several Arab

countries, involving a population officially estimated at about four million

persons. Outside observer believe there is a great deal of "number fudging"

in UNRWA refugee rolls, with deaths and births not recorded accurately. Kushner and Kedar showed that another UN agency�the UN High

Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)�had a totally different record:

successfully resettling millions of refugees from wars and natural disasters

all over the world, usually within a ten-year time limit. They cited the

fact that UNHCR had successfully resettled Palestinian refugees from Iraq,

who were threatened by war there, in Chile, Brazil and Iceland, among other

locales. Speaking at a press conference at the American Colony Hotel in

Jerusalem, Kedar and Kushner strongly suggested that Western leaders should

revamp UNRWA, which deals only with the Palestinian refugees, and make it

more like UNHCR. Kedar said other Arabs resent the Palestinans as "fat cats," because

they have been living off international aid for 60 years. He said the

average Palestinian refugee stipend was several times the annual income of

the average Egyptian, for example. Kushner said that UNRWA in Gaza and in the West Bank had allowed itself

to support text books and curricula used by Hamas and the Fatah-run

Palestinian Authority which demonized Israel and the idea of making peace

with it. "That is complete nonsense for which there is no evidence," asserted

Christopher Gunness, a spokesman for UNRWA "That is complete nonsense

for which there is no evidence," asserted Christopher Gunness, a spokesman

for UNRWA "The Haaretz newspaper said that the last film produced by David

Bedein (who produced the Center for Near Policy Research film) had produced

'a stack of lies,' and this sounds remarkably familiar," he added "On two occasions after the Gaza war," said Gunness, "goods were taken

from UNRWA, and after public condemnation from me, everything was

returned."