In this mailing:
- Timon Dias: The UNRWA Dilemma
- Raymond Ibrahim: Vote for Me Or Else: Islamists' Latest Excuse to Kill Minorities
- Khaled Abu Toameh: King Abdullah Says No To Hamas
The UNRWA Dilemma
by Timon Dias
September 17, 2013 at 5:00 am
September 17, 2013 at 5:00 am
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If the entire
Palestinian Authority leadership lives off an international welfare check that
arrives only because the conflict still exists, there isn't much incentive for
ending the conflict.
The Palestinian people, according to a recent study by the Jerusalem Institute of Justice, have
received per capita, adjusted for inflation, 25 times more aid than did
Europeans to rebuild war-torn Western Europe under the Marshall plan after the
Second World War.Most of these funds, according to the study, reached the Palestinian people through The United Nations Relief and Work Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).
UNRWA is the only UN refugee agency dedicated to a single group of people, and the only agency that designates individuals as original refugees if they have lived in areas effected by the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, for a minimum of only two years, before being displaced. UNRWA is also the only UN agency that designates the descendants of the original refugees as refugees as well – even though 90% of UNRWA-designated refugees have never actually been displaced.
UNRWA, furthermore, violates the UNHCR Refugee Convention by insisting that two million people (40% of UNWRA's beneficiaries) who have been given full citizenship in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, are nevertheless still classified as refugees, and by encouraging them to act on a "right of return."
Although, since World War II, fifty million people have been displaced by armed conflict, the Palestinian people are the only ones in history to receive this special treatment.
Before describing why UNRWA is a body that drastically reduces any chance of a lasting peace, let's take a look at which citizens are funding UNWRA. After all: "There is no such thing as public money, there is only taxpayers' money."
The total 2012 UNRWA budget was $907,907,371. Although the permanent supportive rhetoric for the "Palestinian case" from the Muslim world might lead one to expect that UNWRA is funded mainly by Muslim countries, in fact UNRWA is almost entirely funded by Western taxpayers: The USA, EU, UK, Sweden, Norway, Germany, The Netherlands and Japan pay $644,701,999, or 71% of the annual UNRWA budget. The funds from the second largest donor, the EU, are of course already composed of EU taxes from its member states.
So where do the Muslim states rank? First in, at #15, is Saudi Arabia. The land of palaces and private gold leaf painted Airbus A380's on the Royal runways chipped in $12,030,540 -- less than half of a tiny country such as the Netherlands. Second, at #18, is Turkey, the supposedly economically flourishing state of a prime minister who zealously supports Hamas, but which contributes only $8,100,000. Qatar, which stands accused of paying millions in bribes to win the bid to host the 2022 World Cup, and is now spending millions on the construction of high end soccer stadiums, contributed exactly $0 to its Palestinian brothers in faith.
These figures also reflect the nature of the role Muslim countries play in the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. In their rhetoric, they are permanently hostile towards Israel and sympathetic to slogans such as: "Free Palestine," still basically a euphemism for "Destroy Israel." Even this meager support, however, appears to strengthen the Palestinian leadership's resolve to say no to peace whenever that occasion arises. The non-existence of peace, however, is what perpetuates Palestinian agony, along with Muslim states' refusal to deliver anything helpful when it comes to either the material needs or the human rights of the Palestinians. The role of most Muslim states in the conflict therefore seems a subversive one, aimed at the perpetuation of Palestinian suffering to divert attention from their own deficiencies such as their terrible human right record, lack of democracy, and the repression of their own peoples; Assad allegedly lavishly paid Syrian Palestinians to storm the Israeli border in 2011, to divert attention away from his bloody crackdown on his countrymen and to let the world media focus on Israel shooting Palestinians on the border.
Muslim states use the Palestinian people as pawns in a hostile game of chess against Israel.
Now that we know where the money does and does not come from, it might be helpful to review how UNWRA spends it. Just a minor detail to keep in mind along the way: The personal wealth of PA president Abbas is estimated at $100 million. UNWRA also funds for Palestinian children summer camps in which the entire focus seems to emphasize the children's right of return to the villages in which their grandparents are said to have lived, as well as the means to achieve this: Jihad – as shown in a rather disturbing documentary, Camp Jihad, produced by David Bedein.
In one scene from it, for example, a woman asks children to tell her where they are from. They respond with Jaffa, Haifa and so on, but admit they have never been to these places. The woman then shouts: "We will return to our villages with power and honor. With god's help and our own strength we will wage war and with education and jihad we will return!"
A still shot from the
documentary film "Camp Jihad".
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Apart from summer camps like these, the whole implementation of UNWRA might actually be counterproductive. If the entire Palestinian Authority leadership lives off an international welfare check that only arrives annually because the conflict still exits, there isn't much incentive for ending the conflict.
But there might be something more fundamental at play. German sociologist Gunnar Heinsohn's 2003 book, Sons and World Power, explores the relation between war and the number of males in a society. Heinsohn writes:
[D]espite claiming that it wants to bring peace to the region, the West continues to make the population explosion in Gaza worse every year. By generously supporting UNRWA's budget, the West assists a rate of population increase that is 10 times higher than in its own countries. Much is being said about Iran waging a proxy war against Israel by supporting Hezbollah and Hamas. One may argue that by fueling Gaza's untenable population explosion, the West unintentionally finances a war-by-proxy against the Jews of Israel.
If we seriously want to avoid another generation of war in Gaza, we must have the courage to tell the Gazans that they will have to start looking after their children themselves, without UNRWA's help. This would force Palestinians to focus on building an economy instead of freeing them up to wage war. Of course, every baby lured into the world by our money up to now would still have our assistance.
If we make this urgently needed reform, then by at least 2025 many boys in Gaza -- as in Algeria -- would…be able to look forward to a more secure future in a less violent society.
Despite the many subversive factors UNRWA adds to an already volatile situation, however, there is outspoken Israeli support for UNRWA. These voices, however, always strongly emphasize that UNRWA should limit its work to humanitarian missions, and refrain from political alignment – even though this train has long-since left the station. In 1967 the Comay-Michelmore Exchange of Letters initiated Israel's policy of cooperation with UNRWA. As recent as 2009 this policy was reaffirmed by a representative of the Israeli Foreign Affairs Ministry, Dr. Uri Resnick, in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly in which he proposed to maintain "close coordination."
In 2010, Canada's government of Stephen Harper redirected its UNRWA funding directly to the Palestinian Authority to increase accountability. In 2011 the Dutch government announced it would thoroughly review its UNRWA policy. The Israeli government urged its allies to leave their UNRWA policies as they were. As Steven Rosen and Daniel Pipes explain:
Israeli officials distinguish between UNRWA's negative political role and its more positive role as a social service agency providing assistance, primarily medical and educational. They appreciate that UNRWA, with funds provided by foreign governments, helps one third of the population in the West Bank and three-quarters in Gaza. Without these funds, Israel could face an explosive situation on its borders and international demands that it, depicted as the "occupying power," assume the burden of care for these populations. In the extreme case, the Israel Defense Forces would have to enter hostile areas to oversee the running of schools and hospitals, for which the Israeli taxpayer would have to foot the bill – a most unattractive prospect. As a well-informed Israeli official sums it up, UNRWA plays a "key role in supplying humanitarian assistance to the civilian Palestinian population" that must be sustained.
By perpetuating the Palestinians' refugee status and enabling a demographic that does not educate its members for peace, UNRWA is an obstacle to peace. Ironically, however, UNRWA's humanitarian work relieves Israel of the hypothetical "responsibility" of caring for over five million Palestinians.
Can the West, as UNRWA's largest funder, do anything to realize a more balanced UNRWA policy? In the same piece Rosen and Pipes offer an option that unfortunately has not yet been put in to practice:
Can the elements of UNRWA useful to Israel be retained without perpetuating the refugee status? Yes, but this requires distinguishing UNRWA's role as a social service agency from its role producing ever-more refugees. Contrary to its practice of registering grandchildren as refugees, Section III.A.2 and Section III.B of UNRWA's Consolidated Eligibility & Registration Instructions allow it to provide social services to Palestinians without defining them as refugees. This provision is already in effect: in the West Bank, for example, 17% of the Palestinians registered with UNRWA in January 2012 and eligible to receive its services were not listed as refugees.
Given that UNRWA reports to the UN General Assembly, with its automatic anti-Israel majority, mandating a change in UNRWA practices is nearly impossible. But major UNRWA donors, starting with the US government, should stop being accomplices to UNRWA's perpetuation of the refugee status.
Donor states should, therefore, consider attaching strict conditions to their funding. With its annual $233,328,550 donation, the US should take the lead, and individual EU member states could inquire what the actual share of each is in the annual $204,098,161 EU donation, and then seriously consider imposing conditions on delivering this share.
If the current situation is left untouched, the Palestinians are left suffering, fed on dreams and violence.
Vote for Me Or Else: Islamists' Latest Excuse to Kill Minorities
by Raymond Ibrahim
September 17, 2013 at 4:30 am
September 17, 2013 at 4:30 am
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This threat
– demanding that Christians and other minorities vote for the same Islamist
leaders who persecute them, "or else" – has taken root in other
countries as well.
In what seems to be a pattern in many Muslim nations of finding new pretexts
to justify anti-Christian -- and anti-"Other" -- behavior, Egypt's
Christians and their churches are under attack, ostensibly because Christians
joined the June 30 Revolution, which led to the ouster of the Muslim
Brotherhood.Even before then, during the 2012 presidential elections, Christians were often threatened and sometimes attacked for not voting for the Muslim Brotherhood -- an absurd expectation considering that for decades it has been the Brotherhood and its many Islamist and jihadi offshoots that have terrorized Egypt's Christians.
Even the popular Egyptian columnist Khaled Montasser, a Muslim, in an article published around the 2012 presidential elections, scoffed at the idea that Copts could ever vote for Morsi. Montasser documented, among other items, how the Brotherhood has in years past issued fatwas calling for the destruction of churches and a ban on burying "unclean" Christian "infidels" anywhere near Muslim graves. "After such fatwas," Montasser concluded, "Dr. Morsi and his Brotherhood colleagues can ask and wonder -- 'Why are the Copts afraid?'"
When Ahmed Shafiq, Morsi's political opponent, did well in Egypt's first round of presidential elections -- many insist he actually even won the elections -- the Islamists blamed the Copts for voting for him and not for Morsi. Tarek al-Zomor, a prominent figure of al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya -- the "Islamic Group" which in 1997 slaughtered some 58 foreign tourists (mainly European, American and Japanese) during a massacre in Luxor -- even "demanded an apology from the Copts" for voting for Shafiq, adding that "this was a fatal error."
This threat -- demanding that Christians and other minorities vote for the same Islamist leaders who persecute them, "or else" -- has taken root in other countries, as well.
In Pakistan, for instance, according to a May 20 report by the Morning Star News,
A Muslim political candidate suspected of murdering a Christian has instigated calls from mosque loudspeakers for attacks on Christians, whom he blames for his May 11 election loss. Tensions were high in Punjab Province's Okara district after provincial assembly seat candidate Mehr Abdul Sattar, sought by police in connection with a 2008 murder, on May 13 arranged for mosque calls for violence against Christian villages. "Burn their homes to the ground … Punish them such that they forget Gojra and Joseph Colony," was the cry from village mosques in the district [emphasis added].
"Gojra and Joseph Colony" are references to two separate incidents when Pakistani Christians were especially persecuted: in 2009 in Gojra, eight Christians were burned alive, 100 houses looted and 50 homes set ablaze after a blasphemy accusation; and last March in Joseph Colony, Lahore, some 3,000 Muslims attacked Christians, destroying 175 homes and burning their churches, again, because a Christian was accused of insulting Islam.
Calls for violence against the Christians who did not vote for Mehr Abdul Sattar have been effective. Sattar's supporters ambushed a convoy of about 100 Christians on their way to congratulate his opponent on his victory.
Though notified, police failed to respond. This is unsurprising, considering that Sattar himself is connected to the murder of Javed Masih, a Christian who had opposed him in a 2008 election, according to the Morning Star News report.
"The late Javed Masih used to tell the peasants to vote according to their conscience and not get intimidated by gangsters like Mehr [Abdul Sattar]," said Younas Iqbal, chairman of a peasant movement fighting for land rights: "His efforts bore fruit, and Mehr lost the general election in 2008. Unfortunately, Masih had to sacrifice his life for the cause, while several others were injured in an armed attack by Mehr's men."
According to Iqbal, this latest "humiliating defeat further stoked anger in Mehr, and he is now bent upon punishing us," pointing out that Sattar has targeted no Muslims for opposing him by voting for others.
If modern systems of governance, such as voting, elections, and democracy are being utilized as new ways to persecute Christians and other minorities in countries such as Egypt and Pakistan -- which differ in every way except for the practice of Islam -- intimidation by fundamentalists is alive and well across the Islamic world.
Raymond Ibrahim is author of Crucified Again: Exposing Islam's New War in Christians (published by Regnery in cooperation with Gatestone Institute, April 2013). He is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and an associate fellow at the Middle East Forum.
Related Topics: Egypt, Pakistan
| Raymond
Ibrahim
King Abdullah Says No To Hamas
by Khaled Abu
Toameh
September 17, 2013 at 4:00 am
September 17, 2013 at 4:00 am
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The sources
said that the Qataris offered hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to Jordan
in return for allowing Hamas to open offices in the kingdom. By rejecting these
requests, King Abdullah has shown that he has no intention to serve as a
lifesaver for failed Islamists who are facing growing opposition from their own
people in the Gaza Strip.
Jordan's King Abdullah has turned down a request from Hamas to re-open its
offices in his country, according to informed sources in Amman.The sources said that Qatar, one of the few Arab countries that continue to support Hamas, recently asked King Abdullah to allow Hamas to resume its activities in the kingdom.
The Jordanians banned Hamas in 1999 and stripped some of the Islamist movement's leaders, including Khaled Mashal, of their Jordanian citizenship.
Last year, however, relations between Jordan and Hamas seemed to be warming up as Mashal was permitted to visit Amman and hold talks with King Abdullah.
Hamas's hope that Mashal's visit would pave the way for the movement to return to Jordan have now been dashed as the monarch refused to allow the movement and its leaders to resume their activities there.
The sources said that the Qataris offered hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to Jordan in return for allowing Hamas to open offices in the kingdom.
"King Abdullah turned down the Qatari offer," the sources said. "Jordan's policy toward Hamas remains unchanged."
The short-lived rapprochement between Hamas and Jordan was apparently linked to the king's fear of the Arab Spring, which saw the rise of Islamists in a number of Arab countries and emboldened the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan.
By inviting Mashal and other Hamas leaders to Jordan last year, King Abdullah was seeking to appease the Muslim Brotherhood, whose supporters were behind a wave of protests demanding reform and an end to corruption in the kingdom.
The downfall of the Muslim Brotherhood regime in Egypt and growing disillusionment with Islamists throughout the Arab world have given King Abdullah enough confidence to turn his back, once again, on Hamas and their allies in the kingdom.
The removal of President Mohamed Morsi from power has weakened and divided Jordan's Muslim Brotherhood. While some of the organization's leaders have called for reassessing their strategy in the wake of the failure of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, others have come out against King Abdullah for supporting the anti-Morsi "military coup."
The divisions inside Jordan's Muslim Brotherhood are seen as good news for King Abdullah and bad news for Hamas.
Muslim Brotherhood supporters are no longer staging weekly demonstrations throughout the kingdom to demand "reforms and democracy." The Arab Spring had triggered a series of rallies and marches that were organized by the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan, prompting many political analysts to predict that that the countdown for regime change in Amman had begun.
At one point, King Abdullah expressed his concern over the Islamists' intentions when, in an interview with the Atlantic magazine, he described the Muslim Brotherhood as "wolves in sheep's clothing" and a "Masonic cult always loyal to their leader."
Hamas, meanwhile, appears to have lost not only their patrons in Egypt, but also their political allies in Jordan. Hamas leaders in the Gaza Strip say they are fully aware of the "problems" facing the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan. "We can't rely on their support because they have been affected negatively by the Egyptian crisis," admitted a Hamas representative.
Hamas once had hopes that the Jordanian monarch would be foolish enough to allow the "wolves in sheep's clothing" to set foot in his country.
By rejecting requests to allow Hamas to return to Jordan, King Abdullah has shown that he has no intention to serve as lifesaver for failed Islamists who are facing growing opposition from their own people in the Gaza Strip.
Hamas is in big trouble and there is no reason why the Jordanians should come to the rescue. The downfall of Hamas will in fact serve the interest of the king and many Jordanians, as it will undoubtedly further undermine the Muslim Brotherhood in the kingdom.
Related Topics: Khaled Abu
Toameh
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