Tag Archives: UNRWA

Op-Ed: “Exposé: How Much Does the War On Israel Cost Europe?

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By Giulio Meotti:

The EU has become the largest single donor to the Palestinians, contributing about €500 million ($720 million).Europe also channels an ocean of money to the anti-Israel NGOs. And don’t forget the textbooks.

Over the past year, the Coordination Forum for Countering Anti-Semitism monitored incidents worldwide. In 2012, 6 oof the 10 worst anti-Semithic attacks took place in Europe (the rest are shared among Iran, Yemen and United States).

Even more frightening are the new statystics about the popular feelings about the Jewish people in Europe.

Amid the rise in hate crimes in France, the World Zionist Organization calculated the level of anti-Semitism among French citizens. The survey revealed that more than 40% of the French population holds anti-Semitic beliefs. The survey also found that 47% of the population believes that “French Jews are more loyal to Israel than the country where they live.”

The Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project found that 46% of Spanish residents held an unfavorable view of Jews. Meanwhile, 47% of Germans are of the opinion that “Israel is exterminating the Palestinians,” according to a poll undertaken by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, affiliated with the German Social Democratic Party.

44 % of Italians are prejudiced or hostile toward Jews, according to a study recently issued by the Italian Chamber of Deputies’s Committee.

You can find the same trend all over Europe. Half of the population holds deep anti-Jewish feelings.

Britain has just included Israel on a list of 28 countries whose human rights record is of “concern” to the government. It’s the same Britain that in 1989 refused to sell gas masks to Israel because they could be used for “offensive purposes”. In 1991 a subsidiary of Thames Water Plc., the British company that supplies water and sewage services to most of London, refused to do business with Israel because it has “many and valued Arab clients”.

How much is Europe investing in Israel’s destruction? By financing the Palestinian war and sponsoring the Arab rejectionist anti-Semitism, Europe is reawakening the centuries-old beast of Judeophobic bigotry. European taxes are used to fund anti-Semitism of an intensity unseen since Nazi Germany.

The European Union just announced a contribution of EUR 14 million for a programme in Gaza. Most of this aid goes through UNRWA.

Many terrorists work for the UN agency,  such as Issa al Batran, who was in charge of Hamas rockets production and was also employed as a teacher in the UN schools. Or the UN Gaza’s schoolmaster, Awad al Qiq, who was the Islamic Jihad “rocket-maker”.

Food storage facilities in UNRWA’s areas, funded by the European Union, have become munitions depots. UNRWA’s employees transported weapons and terrorists by the agency ambulances.

Hamas interior minister, Said Sayyam, was also a math teacher for UNRWA. The schools administered by the UN have become madrassa for the war against the Jews.

In Jenin, UNRWA schools displayed images of “martyrs” responsubile for dozens of Israelis killed in Hadera and Afula.

Despite all this evidence, for the period 2007-2013 a total of €29 million has been allocated by the European Union to UNRWA’s programme.

Among the recipients in Nablus of the European aid just approved there is also Al-Najah University, which serves Palestinian terror organizations as a stage for promoting their commitment to armed struggle. Many of Hamas’ leaders in Nablus, including leaders of the Az Adin al-Qassam terrorist wing, began their involvement in the movement while students or professors at the university. The faculty also served as a recruitment center for suicide bombers. Brussels just approved for Nablus a 4-year programme with 4 million €.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority and the European Union recently met in Ramallah to discuss foreign aid in the next five years. The European Union just allocated €60 million to “support the Palestinian National Development Plan by helping the PA to finance its budget deficit and implement its reform agenda”. This fund perpetuates the chronic Arab corruption.

In 1998 $20 million in European Union aid that was intended to provide ”cheap housing for Palestinians” was used to finance luxury apartments for rich supporters of Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat.

The European Union also just made a contribution of €7.2 million to the payment of the December salaries and pensions of “83,800 Palestinian civil servants and pensioners in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip”.

The Palestinian Authority routinely authorizes payments to the families of “martyrs” by using Europe’s aid. The Palestinian Authority has introduced a new law which pays the families of suicide bombers out of its civil service budget.

In 2011, the European Union allocated €145 million for the Palestinian Authority’s expenditures, €35 million for “institution building projects” and €22 million for support to public infrastructure. A further 11 million were allocated for the “private sector” and €8 million for “East Jerusalem initiatives”, which means charging Israel of “apartheid,” “ethnic cleansing,” and creating a “model of terrorising a civilian population”.

Europe’s goal is to make Israel surrender Area C in Judea and Samaria, because as John Gatt-Rutter, the European Union Representative in Jerusalem said, there is “no viable Palestinian state without area C”. Translated: Judea and Samaria must be “Judenrein”, cleansed of any Jew.

Read more at Arutz Sheva

Giulio Meotti

The writer, an Italian journalist with Il Foglio, writes a twice-weekly column for Arutz Sheva. He is the author of the book “A New Shoah”, that researched the personal stories of Israel’s terror victims, published by Encounter. His writing has appeared in publications, such as the Wall Street Journal, Frontpage and Commentary. He is at work on a book about the Vatican and Israel.

 

 

Hamas Summer Camps Are Child Abuse

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For several years, the international human rights “community” has been claiming the situation in Hamas-run Gaza is a humanitarian catastrophe. This is a lie, because the flow of food and medicine into Gaza has not been halted by Israel and residents of the terrorist enclave are not in danger of perishing for lack of essential materials (unless you think the munitions and construction materials needed for Hamas fortifications qualify under that category). But there is a human rights crisis in the Strip, although it is not the result of any Israeli action. Rather, it is the mass child abuse going under the guise of a summer camp program being run by Hamas.

As the Times of Israel reports, Hamas has replaced UNRWA, the UN agency devoted to caring for and perpetuating the Palestinian refugee problem, as the main provider of summer programs for children in the Strip. But rather than fun activities or education designed to promote peace or productive skills, the Hamas camps are geared toward indoctrinating and training the terrorists of the future. The 70,000 children taking part in the “We Will Live Honorably” camps are forced to undergo paramilitary training that apparently includes forcing them to walk on nails and knife blades as well as preparing them for prison. Rather than worrying about what Israel is doing to protect the people living near the Gaza border from terrorist missile fire, human rights groups should be investigating and condemning what appears to be activities that would be labeled as abuse were it taking place in the West.

Israel’s detractors have begun to talk about Hamas as a “moderate” group that is embracing non-violence as it attempts to expand its reach into the Fatah-run West Bank. But Hamas is an Islamist group whose religious fundamentalism and commitment to violence remains undiminished. While UNRWA has been infiltrated by Hamas, its Summer Games program was clearly an improvement over what Hamas could offer. But under pressure from Hamas, UNRWA canceled the program this year, leaving the Islamist terror group the only provider of summer programs in Gaza.

Read more at Commentary

Also see this:

With UNRWA cutting back, Hamas dominates Gaza summer camp scene

Summer camp is supposed to be fun, right? Well, apparently not if you live in the Gaza Strip. Activities in the summer camps “We will live honorably,” organized by Hamas, include walking on nails and reliving the experience of prisoners in a mock Israeli jail.

“We will live honorably” provides activities to some 70,000 children across the Gaza Strip throughout the summer, the Quds News Network reported this week. But startling photos of the camp’s activities display children walking on nails and on knife blades.

The camp’s organizers even constructed a model of an Israeli security prison, to “reenact the daily suffering of Palestinian prisoners,” the Palestinian Maan news agency reported. The “prison,” made up of six rooms, is meant to demonstrate different aspects of treatment endured by security prisoners: an investigation room, a detention room, a confession extortion room, a solitary confinement room, a courtyard and an infirmary.

Ahmad Rantisi, one of the initiators of the prison idea, told Maan that it is meant to educate the youth about the suffering of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

“We learned that Palestinian prisoners suffer greatly for the Palestinian people. The occupation forces deny them the most basic human rights,” said camper Abdulaziz A-Saqa.

 

Exposing the Palestinian ‘Refugee’ Charade

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Senator Mark Kirk

By Arnold Ahlert:

On May 24th, the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee approved a resolution virtually certain to create a controversy in Washington, D.C. The Kirk Amendment, named after its drafter, Senator Mark Kirk (R-IL), authorizes the State Department to submit a report “detailing the number of people currently receiving United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) services.”

At issue is whether there are 30,000 Palestinian “refugees,” the actual number of living people “personally displaced” during Israel’s 1948 war of independence — or the nearly 5 million Palestinians who comprise their descendants. The distinction centers around two critical issues: Palestinian “right of return” demands and funding for UNRWA.

UNRWA was established in 1948 to assist the 750,000 Palestinians who either chose to leave or were forced out of Israel. UNRWA has essentially operated as a promoter of the Palestinian cause because it funds all 5 million “refugees.” That support amounts to $1.23 billion annually, $250 million of which is underwritten by the United States, UNRWA’s largest single donor. The larger number assuages progressive sensibilities among the United Nations, the U.S. State Department, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and Israeli politicians, all with a vested interest in maintaining what amounts to permanent victimhood status for Palestinians, as well as enabling constant criticism of Jewish settlements.

The first Palestinian census was completed 15 years ago. At the time, the head of the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) admitted it was “a civil intifada,” aimed Jewish settlements. Last December, the Bureau attempted to reprise its demographic misrepresentation, claiming 2.6 million Palestinian Arabs inhabit Judea and Samaria, considered the biblical homeland of the Jewish people. More than 300,000 Israelis currently reside in the area.

Israeli demographer Yoram Ettinger challenged those numbers, characterizing them as “demographic misrepresentations” that overstate the number of West Bank Arabs by 66 percent. He notes that the PCBS’s total is arrived at by counting 400,000 overseas residents, a method that violates international demographic standards, double-counting 240,000 Jerusalem Arabs, and under-reporting Palestinian emigration.

Mr. Ettinger further concluded that Jews now make up 17 percent of the total population of the West Bank, while Arabs make up 20 percent of the Israeli population. Between the Jordan river and Mediterranean, 66 percent of the population is Jewish. And for the last 17 years, Arab birth rates have stabilized while Jewish births have risen significantly on an annual basis. “There is a demographic problem,” Mr. Ettinger concedes, “but there is no demographic machete at the throat of the Jewish state.”

The “machete” to which Mr. Ettinger refers is the claim by Palestinians that demographics, no matter how skewed, is destiny: if Israelis do not accede to their demands, they will soon be a minority between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean. By exposing both the fraudulent Palestinian population totals and the disparate birthrates, Mr. Ettinger undercuts that argument.

Read more at Right Side News