End UNRWA funding permanently, Israeli politicians urge Canada | Only Sports And Health

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A month after Canada temporarily halted funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, some Israeli politicians want Ottawa to make the funding freeze permanent.

Sharren Haskel, the Canadian-born member of Israel’s Knesset, said in an interview that Canada — as a significant backer of the contentious relief agency for Palestinians — should help lead the way by stop sending UNRWA money.

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“The Canadian public doesn’t really understand,” she said.

“(Many Canadians) have no idea what UNRWA really is, and I don’t believe they understand how much the existence of UNRWA is sitting at the core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

Einat Wilf, an Israeli politician who served in the Knesset, agreed.

“This is an opportunity to create public pressure to make the pause permanent,” she said.

“I know (Canada’s) foreign office doesn’t want to do it, and I’m pretty sure the government is not eager to do it, but this is precisely the moment to put the pressure on to make the pause permanent.”

The UN agency supports Palestinians in Gaza and employs about 13,000 people there. Canada stopped funding UNRWA in 2010, with the Trudeau Liberals resuming funding in 2016.

Last June, Canada announced a $100-million, four-year pledge to the UN relief agency to deliver “core programs that support basic education, health, social services and livelihood opportunities and protect the rights of Palestinian refugees.”

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In January as evidence, testimonials and videos emerged showing employees of UNRWA participated in the brutal Hamas attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, Canada followed the United States in temporarily halting funding for the agency.

Questions to the office of International Development Minister Ahmed Hussen on the future of Canada’s UNRWA funding plans have not received a response.

Haskel, who was born in Toronto, expressed concern at the waves of antisemitism sweeping Canada since the Oct. 7 attacks, and the little concern police and governments seem to be expressing over it.

“Jewish communities are taking down symbols. Jewish schools are being attacked. Jewish community events are being targeted,” Haskel said.

“This is pure racism that’s growing in Canada, where I’d always believed was the safest place in the world — especially for Jews.”

Wilf described UNRWA as an airplane.

“It’s a lovely machine, until you hijack it and fly it into a building,” she said.

“UNRWA was a mechanism that started with the best intentions, to be a mechanism through which the (United Nations) General Assembly help settle the Arab refugees from the war of 1948.”

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At the core of the issue, Wilf and Haskel maintain, is the now quarter-century’s long classification of Palestinians as refugees.

“Now recast as Palestinians, those Arab refugees refuse settlement because they understand that if they resettle, it means that the Jewish state is a fait accompli,” Wilf said.

“They need to move on, and they have absolutely no intention of moving on as long as the Jewish state still exists.”

Haskel compared UNRWA’s mandate to that of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR,) which she says integrates refugees to ensure their better future.

“UNRWA didn’t do that with a single Palestinian,” she said.

“On the contrary, UNRWA profits the more deprived, the more poor and the more oppressed the Palestinians are. The more funds it receives, the bigger it becomes.”

As for moving ahead without UNRWA, Haskel dismisses assertions that the agency is irreplaceable.

“UNRWA isn’t really a humanitarian aid organization, it doesn’t have the logistics to provide those kind of quantities of humanitarian aid,” Haskel said.

“Hamas is controlling UNRWA, which means most of the humanitarian aid that comes into Gaza ends up in Hamas’s hands. That’s why we see in the markets, the humanitarian aid being sold instead of being distributed — the tents cost 2,000 shekels ($730,) a bag of flour costs 200 shekels ($74,) a bag of sugar costs 100 shekels ($37) — there’s a whole menu of humanitarian aid that’s being sold in shops, and they all say they bought it from Hamas.”

Haskel said thousands of UNRWA employees are either directly or peripherally connected to Hamas — which is why it wasn’t surprising when news came that agency workers had been involved on Oct. 7.

“Who sits in the logistical centres? Who manages the hospitals and clinics? Who are the managers of the refugee camps? They are Hamas,” she said.

Earlier this month Hamas tunnels containing computer servers were found underneath and directly connected to UNRWA’s headquarters in Gaza.

The cause of doing away with UNRWA is growing on the world stage.

A petition organized by Montreal-born human rights lawyer and executive director of UN Watch — one asking UN Secretary-General António Guterres and world leaders to shut down UNRWA — gathered over 120,000 signatures in 24 hours.

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UNRWA’s contemporary goal, Wilf said, is monetizing Western compassion into furthering the eradication of Israel.

“On a good day I’ll say it funnels innocent, blind Western money into the Palestinian cause of ‘no Jewish state,’ and on my less charitable days I will say that it funnels money of Westerners who are still fumbling with the idea of Jewish power and Jewish sovereignty.”

The insistence to keep funding UNRWA, she said, has more to do with people and governments more interested in feeling good, rather than doing good.

Canada, Haskel said, has an important role to play in the peace process.

“It should have a much stronger voice,” she said.

“You just can’t turn a blind eye.”

National Post

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