The UNRWA mystery - solved
Posted by Phillip Dolby on 5th June 2024
Israel’s unevidenced vendetta against UNRWA was an opportunistic PR strategy on the part of the Israeli government, aimed at reclaiming the media narrative
THE Israeli government surprised the international community in January 2024, alleging 12 members of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees' 30,000 staff had been involved in the October 7 attack.
UNRWA immediately dismissed the 10 employees accused by Israel of culpability (the other two were thought to be dead) and vowed to hold accountable anyone implicated in terrorism. The UN also launched an investigation.
As the headlines raged, the Israeli government meanwhile identified an opportunity to undermine an organisation it had long abhorred. It distributed so-called ‘intelligence reports’ which were said to show 10 percent of UNRWA’s staff had unspecified “ties” to Islamist militant groups in Gaza.
Israel then pressured governments around the world to suspend funding for UNRWA, which many did - including the UK, the USA, the EU, Canada, Australia, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Germany, France and Japan.
UNRWA was established by the UN General Assembly in 1949 to support the 700,000 Palestinian refugees whom Jewish militias had forced from their homes during the war that led to the creation of the state of Israel. Palestinians refer to this expulsion as the ‘Nakba’, or catastrophe.
Today, UNRWA provides education, healthcare, and social services - including food distribution - to the surviving refugees and their descendants.
The cuts in funding - worth around $500 million - could not have come at a worse time for the besieged people of Gaza. Over 1.5 million Palestinians living in the coastal enclave have been displaced - again - by the latest Israeli war, which was started in retaliation to the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October, and these refugees depend on aid for their survival.
After an independent UN investigation into the Israeli accusations, however, it has been found that there was “insufficient evidence” to back-up the claims about UNRWA staff being involved with Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
The Colonna report, carried out by former French foreign minister Catherine Colonna, found that UNRWA had regularly supplied Israel with lists of its employees for vetting, and that, “the Israeli government has not informed UNRWA of any concerns relating to any UNRWA staff based on these staff lists since 2011.”
The axed funding has now, on the most part, been reinstated by the vast majority of the donor countries, which is a relief to the millions of Palestinians living in various places around the Middle East.
So why did Israel make such unevidenced claims earlier this year, and seemingly lie about this key issue? The answer is simple: it is fighting a propaganda war, and has form in the game.
In the words of British-American journalist Mehdi Hasan: “Since the horrific 7 October attack, the far-right Israeli government and its army of propagandists have deceived and fooled Western politicians and journalists not once or twice, but multiple times.
“There are almost too many lies, distortions and falsehoods to keep track of. Forty babies beheaded by Hamas? Never happened. Babies baked in ovens or hung on clothes lines? False. A Bond villain-style lair hidden under al-Shifa hospital? Nope. Palestinians in Gaza caught on camera faking their injuries? A complete fabrication. The list of Hamas hostage-takers found on a wall in the al-Rantisi children’s hospital? Sorry, no, it was just the days of the week on a calendar in Arabic.”
It is also interesting to note the importance of timing when weighing-up these false Israeli allegations. Just days prior to Israel's initial announcement, the UN’s International Court of Justice (ICJ) had found it was “plausible” that the IDF was committing genocidal acts in its onslaught on Gaza.
This was a PR disaster for Israel, which is keen to portray itself as a beacon of Western democracy, prosecuting a just war with “the most moral army in the world.”
The accusation that UNRWA was involved in the 7 October attacks was a convenient foil to distract the media narrative away from Israel’s ongoing war crimes, and shift the attention of the international community onto UNRWA and its unsubstantiated links to terrorism.
