Correction :Study Shows UN Refugee Agency Aids Terror, Not Peace

 Sunday, July 31, 2011
  Correction :Study Shows UN Refugee Agency Aids Terror, Not Peace
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."