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The “International Summit for a Future Beyond UNRWA” Highlights Hamas Terrorism as Experts Call for Replacement

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Hillel Neuer Executive Director of UN Watch

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The “International Summit for a Future Beyond UNRWA” Highlights Hamas Terrorism as Experts Call for Replacement

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Edited by:  Fern Sidman

On Monday, February 26th, the UN Watch organization, headed by Hillel Neuer, held an important conference called the International Summit for a Future Beyond UNRWA in Geneva.  Among the distinguished speakers delivering remarks at the conference were former UNRWA and UN officials, experts on international aid, America’s former Middle East peace envoy, and lawmakers from UNRWA donor countries.

The entire International Summit for a Future Beyond UNRWA video you can view above

The full list of speakers included  Ayelet Samerano, the mother of 21 year old, Yonatan Samerano, whose body was seized and taken to Gaza by an employee of UNRWA during the October 7th massacre, Ambassador Dennis Ross, counselor at Washington Institute for Near East Policy and former U.S. point man on the Middle East peace process,  James Lindsay, former UNRWA General Counsel,  Zlatko Zigic, Senior Official, United Nations Migration Agency, 1997-2017, Bonnie Glick, Deputy Administrator and Chief Operating Officer of U.S. Agency for International Development, 2019-2020, Einat Wilf, former Member of Knesset, co-author of “The War of Return,”  Adi Schwartz, Fellow at the Misgav Institute, co-author of “The War of Return, “  Edward Flaherty, expert on UN investigations and legal proceedings,  Baroness Ruth Deech of the UK House of Lords, Amb. Meirav Eilon Shahar, Permanent Representative of Israel to the United Nations in Geneva and José Garson, former expert at United Nations Capital Development Fund, focusing on development projects with Least Developed Countries and anti-poverty strategies.

The other speakers included Hillel Neuer, Executive Director of United Nations Watch,  Hon. Chris Smith, Member of U.S. Congress, Chair of House Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights and International Organization, Hon. David Lega, Member of European Parliament, Committees on Foreign Affairs and Human Rights, Hon. Assita Kanko, Member of European Parliament, Hon. Caroline Yadan, Member of French National Assembly, Hon. Alfred Heer, Member of Swiss Parliament, Hon. Melissa Lantsman, Member of Canadian Parliament,  Hon. Ritchie Torres, Member of U.S. Congress,   Hon. Anthony Housefather, Member of Canadian Parliament and Hon. Ivan Scalfarotto, Member of Italian Parliament.

During her address that the summit, Samerano demanded to meet with UN chief Antonio Guterres while she was in Geneva. “You are next door, meet me today and tell me what are you going to do and how you can bring me back my son?” said Samerano in a video distributed by the Hostage Families Forum, according to a report on Monday in The Times of Israel.

“Mr. Guterres — look at my eyes and answer me now, where is my son?” she added at the forum held by the UN Watch organization, as was reported  by the Times of Israel. “You are next door, you’re here and you have the opportunity to meet me today and tell me what are you going to do… I’m not an investigator and cannot answer these questions. I’m just a mother who lost the most precious thing in the world.”

Guterres is currently meeting with the foreign minister of Iran in Geneva.

She added that, “Yonatan and his friends believe in acceptance and care for our world, for the earth and for all human beings and animals. My young son’s generation don’t care about religion, faith, sexual orientation or race, they just want to live a peaceful and happy life. My son was not armed, he was not in a war situation, his only weapons were his smile, happiness and charm.

“You are asking me why UNRWA needs to be replaced? An UNRWA worker kidnapped my son. A social worker for a so-called humanitarian organization kidnapped my son. How can someone working for an organization that claims to do good in this world do something so cruel and inhumane? How can the UN pay this man who dragged my son’s limp body on the ground, and then picked him up if he was a prize back to Gaza? How many more lives have been ruined by this person hauling my son like he is not even a human being into a UNRWA car? Are there any other hostages held by UN employees even as we are speaking right now?”

Hillel Neuer of UN Watch told the attendees at the summit that, “we are at a turning point. Just a few weeks ago, most of the donor states of UNRWA led by the US froze their funding for the first time to this agency over evidence that members of the UNRWA staff actually took part in the atrocities of October 7th. Evidence, as reported in the Wall Street Journal that anywhere between 1,200 to 1,500 employees of UNRWA, a so-called humanitarian group, actually belong to Hamas and Islamic Jihad.”

He added that, “countries have frozen funding, that’s where we are at today. They have created two inquiries, one is by the Internal Oversight Office, known as OIOS. “

“There is a second investigation, which is very significant. It’s headed by Catherine Colonna, the former French Foreign Minister, she just stepped down about a month ago. She heads this independent review group set up by the Secretary-General. It’s supposed to look into how UNRWA deals with violations of neutrality and how they respond to it. And there are serious questions about the independence of this group. Catherine Colonna herself as she stepped down, she sent a tweet, message, publicly to the head of UNRWA congratulating him on his wonderful work which is needed now more than ever.

This was on January 14th, 4 days after we began to reveal the telegram chat group of 3,000 UNRWA teachers who were celebrating the atrocities of October 7th. So after we initially exposed it, 4 days later, Catherine Colonna, French foreign minister, congratulated UNRWA on their valuable work that is “needed more than ever.” Is she really qualified to conduct a credible, objective, serious independent review? The question answers itself, “Neuer continued.

Adi Schwartz, a Fellow at the Misgav Institute and co-author of “The War of Return” told the summit attendees that “the problem with UNRWA is that it is a war agency.  I know that Western donors, Western countries, and the media talk about UNRWA as an aid agency, and even now we’re talking about what alternatives we should find in order to provide aid to the Palestinians. But that’s simply not what UNRWA is about.”

He added that, “What UNRWA is actually doing is supporting the Palestinian narrative – which I’ll explain in a minute – providing generations of Palestinian fighters, combatants, willing to commit violence against Jews and against Israelis, and, in addition, giving terrorists like Hamas and, earlier, the PLO and other terror organizations all the time in the world to plan their terror attacks, while UNRWA is taking care of their social services, health, education, etc. They have all the time to sit underground and plan all those attacks.”

New York Congressman Ritchie Torres said, “Associate Justice Robert Jackson served as the chief prosecutor in the Nuremberg trials. In his opening statement he said, “the wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish are so calculated, so malignant, so devastating, that we cannot tolerate their being ignored because we cannot survive their being repeated.”

 

Those same words should be said about October 7th. Israel cannot tolerate October 7th being ignored, because the Jewish state cannot survive it being repeated. For me, October 7th was a crime against humanity so barbaric that it cannot be ignored, it cannot go unpunished.

Hamas must be removed from power, and the perpetrators of October 7th must be brought to justice.

Israel has a right to defend itself against Hamas in the aftermath of October 7th for the same reason the United States had a right to defend itself against Al Qaeda in the aftermath of 9/11. Self-defense is the right, and responsibility, and raison d’être of every nation-state, including the Jewish nation-state.”

Einat Wilf, former Member of Knesset and co-author of “The War of Return” told the summit that “UNRWA is a classic case of you get what you pay for. So we need to make sure that we pay for something else.  For 75 years, money, legitimacy, support, services, aid, were given – were funneled – to the perpetuation of the myth that Palestinians are still – uniquely, from all the tens of millions of refugees throughout the 20th century – refugees from a war that we think ended 75 years ago. But they don’t think it ends until they win it to their cause of no Jewish state.”

She added that,  “all the Western legitimacy, the global legitimacy, the funding, the aid, the services were funneled to the perpetuation of the myth of the refugee status and to the belief and the fictional idea of a right of return.  And lest we think that return is an innocent idea of just feelings of nostalgia to a home that belonged to a great-grandparent in today’s Israel, October 7th is return.

October 7th is the realization of the Palestinian vision of return. It was never an innocent idea. It always had the element of violent, brutal triumphalism over the Jewish state. All the money supported that for 75 years.  So what we need to ask right now is not who will replace UNRWA – that doesn’t matter – but what? What will replace UNRWA?”

Bonnie Glick, Senior Adviser at Center for Strategic and International Studies and former Deputy Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development said, “I’ve been calling for the dismantlement and the defunding of UNRWA within my own government for over a dozen years. It’s a tragedy that it took Oct 7th, and the wanton, sadistic slaughter of 1200 Israelis, Americans, Thais, Nepalese, Argentines, Danes, Canadians, and a dozen others, as well as the abduction of over 240 men, women, children, elderly, and babies, and the rapes of still untold hundreds of women, girls, boys, and men, for the world’s eyes to be opened.

She added that, “When the world’s eyes were opened, there were a few eyeballs that remained glued shut, unyielding in support of Hamas, unwilling to see the facts of the violence of Oct 7th. Among those who were willfully shielding their vision were UN Women, the ICRC, the WHO, SG Antonio Guterres himself, and of course Philippe Lazzarini and his fellow underworld bosses in UNRWA. Underworld is actually an apt description as we’ve all learned, Hamas had an enormous tunnel directly underneath the UNRWA’s headquarters in Gaza.  Electricity, lighting, refrigeration, pDonatebalance of naturelumbing, and lodging for Hamas leaders, all were provided by UNRWA.”

James G. Lindsay, former UNRWA General Counsel said, “During my years with UNRWA, I suggested several ways that the agency could improve its operations. But I found that these sorts of suggestions were not welcome by the people in charge. I started as a senior lawyer, but not the senior lawyer, and neither the senior lawyer nor the other members of the UN staff were receptive to really any changes to be made to UNRWA.

He added that, “After leaving the agency, and as a visiting fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, I wrote a monograph entitled, “Fixing UNRWA” which urged UNRWA to make a large number of reforms. It’s now 15 years since I wrote that and other people have also made critiques of UNRWA and suggested ways that it can be improved. As near as I can tell, all of those suggestions, mine and other peoples, have remained unwelcome, and they certainly remain unheeded.

With the recent intelligence indicating that large numbers of UNRWA staff are associated with terrorist groups, a lot of the calls for reforming UNRWA  have somewhat fallen by the wayside and been replaced by calls to end UNRWA.”

Ambassador Dennis Ross, Counselor at Washington Institute for Near East Policy and former U.S. point man on Middle East peace process said, “Number one, UNRWA cannot be subservient to Hamas. It’s not just that it employs people who are Hamas members, supporters and so forth. That we know is a fact. It’s also that it’s clear that one of the most important operational and intelligence centers underground was underneath the headquarters of UNRWA within Gaza City. The argument that this was not something that could have been known, the character of this tunnel was such that it would have been impossible to be in the building and not know, or hear, what was going on underneath. This was a kind of classic case of “hear no evil, see no evil, and not want to discuss any evil.” So the subservience of UNRWA to Hamas, that has to end, number one.”

Ross continued by saying, “Number two, there needs to be a thorough vetting of the people who work for UNRWA. There are plenty of lists that are available, certainly the United States has a list of terrorists that OFAC produces. There should be vetting of the people who are working for UNRWA and compared to that list. UNRWA has never been prepared to accept anything like that. That is unquestionably something that needs to be done.

Thirdly, beneficiaries of UNRWA also need to be checked against these lists. It’s not just the people who are employees of UNRWA, it also has to be those people who are benefiting from it.

Fourthly, there has never been a needs-based standard, by which those who are getting support from UNRWA, material support from UNRWA, are being tested. Those who don’t require assistance shouldn’t be getting it.

Fifthly, the idea that every generation, no matter where they live, should still be treated as if they’re on the books, as refugees, makes no sense on its face. So, this is another area where I think there needs to be basic reform with regard to UNRWA.”

Ambassador Meirav Shahar, Permanent Representative of Israel to the U.N. in Geneva said, “If there’s anything that October 7th showed us – and I don’t think that too many were surprised – but showed us very clearly and very vividly, it’s that workers of UNRWA itself were involved in the massacre of October 7th. Directly involved. UNRWA workers held hostages in their homes.

We know that Hamas has exploited UNRWA facilities for years and years, and they were shielded by UNRWA facilities, like the database that was found under the UNRWA headquarters. But this is just one example.  The fact that Hamas diverted the aid supplied by UNRWA that was supposed to go to Palestinian civilians was evident. But what the IDF has found in the last four months, it’s evident for everyone who wants to see it, who really wants to look in and see it and acknowledge it. The data is there. The pictures are there. The information is there.

So even if there was any debate before October 7th as to whether the intelligence is correct, whether it’s just rumors – which it wasn’t, because we had evidence from over the years as well – I think that the argument and the disagreements should stop.

And the international community, and the United Nations itself, must acknowledge that Hamas is actually, together with UNRWA, basically interlinked, because you have such an infiltration of Hamas into the UNRWA workers that, in a sense, what UNRWA is allowing Hamas to do is to shield them, to embed them.”

 

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