UNRWA condemns the usage of Gazan children as human shields by Hamas

Yesterday, in the course of the regular inspection of its premises, UNRWA discovered approximately 20 rockets hidden in a school in the Gaza Strip. UNRWA strongly condemns the group or groups responsible for placing the weapons in one of its installations. This is a flagrant violation of the inviolability of its premises under international law. This is a prime example how Hamas is using Gazan children as human shileds, provoking Israel attacks to kill them in droves.

http://www.unrwa.org/newsroom/press-releases/unrwa-strongly-condemns-placement-rockets-school

 

Crickets.

 

Ofcurse there is nothing wrong with this right? perfectly reasonable that they'll use a place where children go everyday to hide missiles, nothing wrong with this.

Hypocracy... it's ugly.

 

Hamas is loosing all respect from the international community. These stunts are a PR nightmare for Hamas, but they may not realize it yet.

Personally, I think Hamas is on the way out, and I think their own people are going to vote them out in the end. Well, anyone know when the next Gaza election is?

 

UNRWA is the political arm of Hamas. They assist Hamas by warehousing weapons in their schools. They didn't suddenly discover this. They have known this has been going on. They actively help Hamas. Only fools are falling for their sudden discovery and outrage over this.

 

Wow, is this true? I've never heard this before.

 

That's why it's important to pay attention.

 

by Asaf Romirowsky
inFocus Quarterly
Fall 2007
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Palestinians in the new Islamic State of Gaza, crying out for more aid from the United Nations, are turning to United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) for help. Their reliance upon UNRWA comes as no surprise. The organization has been providing food, medicine, and social services to the Palestinian people for 57 years. Unfortunately, UNRWA has never taken steps to withhold assistance to extremist groups. In some cases, it has cooperated openly with terrorists. Today, as UNRWA provides assistance in Gaza, it is directly providing financial and material support to the Hamas terrorist organization.

A Mutually Beneficial Relationship

According to the U.N. aid agency for Palestinian refugees, up to 825,000 of Gaza's 1.5 million inhabitants claim refugee status. These Gazans receive food rations and other assistance through the United Nations, including medicine, education, and even jobs via UNRWA.

While the refugees benefit from UNRWA, the organization benefits more from the refugees. These refugees are the organization's raison d'etre. Accordingly, UNRWA has zero incentive to resolve the Palestinian refugee problem; ending the refugee problem would render the agency obsolete.

The interests of the refugees and UNRWA are so intertwined that UNRWA is staffed in situ mainly by local Palestinians—more than 23,000 of them—with only about 100 international United Nations professionals. While the U.N. High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) and UNICEF (United Nations International Children's Fund) avoid employing locals who are also recipients of agency services, UNRWA does not make this distinction.

Thus, in the interest of self-perpetuation, UNRWA seeks to maintain the violent status quo in the Middle East, even if it means turning a blind eye to terror.

Helping Hamas Govern Gaza

Supporting the status quo means that UNRWA can be counted on to support the new Hamas government, so long as Hamas enables UNRWA's continued existence. UNRWA is only too eager to provide the services that Hamas does not, cannot, or chooses not to. Hamas can continue to divert international monies that should be earmarked for food or electricity to the stockpiling of weapons and the creation of anti-Israel or anti-American propaganda as long as UNRWA provides the services that the negligent Hamas government should fulfill. In this way, UNRWA is undermining the Western strategy of weakening the Hamas government in Gaza to encourage the return of Palestinian Authority rule under President Mahmoud Abbas.

UNRWA does not hide this. As Commissioner General Karen AbuZayd states, UNRWA's goal "is to reconstruct houses, create jobs, and micro-financing." It has been filling this role since 1991, when UNRWA launched its micro-finance and micro-enterprise program (MMP) in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Indeed, UNRWA provides services that the Palestinian economic ministry or treasury should handle. UNRWA, originally conceived as a temporary apparatus to ease the refugees' economic plight more than a half-century ago, has been providing the Palestinians of Gaza (as well as the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan) with critical economic services for a decade so that the Palestinian government, whether Hamas or the Palestinian Authority, can continue to concentrate on "resistance."

Supporting the Hamas Platform

UNRWA does not seem to have a problem with Hamas' Islamist agenda. It has not condemned the brutal Hamas violence that enabled the terrorist group to take the Gaza Strip by force in June. UNRWA waited to see who would win the battle, then immediately indicated to Hamas that it was eager to get back to providing its services.

UNRWA only appears to be concerned with its own survival and continued funding. As AbuZayd recently said after the Hamas takeover, "we are not scared. Donor countries have not in any way said they will stop their aid to UNRWA. On the contrary, we were approached by many of these countries, even Israel, asking us to continue our services to Palestinian refugees and perhaps even extend these services to do things we haven't done before."

As long as it can continue to feed refugees, UNRWA does not appear to be scared of Hamas' terrorist agenda, either. Professor Rashid Khalidi, a noted Hamas apologist at Columbia University, explains that UNRWA employs, "members of different political groups such as… Hamas and Islamic Jihad, without reference to their belonging to a specific group."

Moreover, according to Yoni Fighel, a former Israeli military governor in the Palestinian territories, UNRWA workers are permitted to openly affiliate with terrorist groups. He notes that, "as long as UNRWA employees are members of Fatah, Hamas, or PFLP [Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine], they are going to pursue the interests of their party within the framework of their job…Who's going to check up on them to see that they don't? UNRWA? They are UNRWA."

In other words, UNRWA sees Hamas and other terrorist groups as part of the Palestinian landscape, and therefore embraces these groups.

Teaching and Preaching Hamas Ideology

Since many UNRWA teachers are alumni of the UNRWA school system, they often perpetuate the vitriolic curriculum they were taught, vilifying Israel and the West. For example, Suheil al-Hindi, an UNRWA teachers' representative, openly applauded suicide bombings at a school in the Jabaliya refugee camp in Gaza in 2003. Instead of a condemnation, al-Hindi received a promotion and was subsequently elected to UNRWA's clerks union.

UNRWA teachers who publicly identify with radical groups have created a teachers' bloc that ensures the election of Hamas members and other individuals committed to Islamist ideologies. After using their classrooms as a place to refine their radical messages, these teachers gravitate to politics. As such, UNRWA's education system has become a springboard for Hamas leaders. For example, Said Sayyam, the Hamas minister of interior and civil affairs, was a teacher in UNRWA schools in Gaza from 1980 to 2003. He went on to become a member of UNRWA's Arab Employees Union, and headed the teachers sector committee.

Notable graduates of the UNRWA school system include former Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, and Abd al-Aziz Rantisi, the former Hamas chief who attended UNRWA secondary school in Khan Younis and graduated top of his class.

UNRWA and Terrorism

UNRWA institutions have not just produced terrorist ideologues. They have also produced terrorist masterminds. According to Dore Gold, former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, UNWRA has produced graduates like Ibrahim Maqadama, who "helped create the military structure of Hamas." Gold notes that, "at least 46 terrorist operatives were students in the UNRWA schools."

There have also been widespread reports of terrorism from UNRWA-supervised facilities, including sniper attacks from UNRWA-run schools, bomb and arms factories in UNRWA camps, the transport of terrorists to their target zones in UNRWA ambulances, and even UNRWA employees directly tied to terrorist attacks against civilians.

Nidal Abd al-Fattah Abdallah Nazzal, an ambulance driver for UNRWA from Kalqiliya in the West Bank, was arrested by Israeli security services in August 2002. Nidal admitted that he was a Hamas activist and that he had transported weapons and explosives to terrorists in his ambulance, taking advantage of the freedom of movement afforded to UNRWA vehicles by the Israelis.

Nahd Rashid Ahmad Atallah, a senior official of UNRWA in the Gaza Strip, was also arrested by Israeli security in August 2002. In his capacity as an UNRWA official, he provided support to families of wanted Fatah and PFLP terrorists. He used his UNRWA car to transport armed members of the "Popular Resistance Committees," a militant faction of the Fatah movement, to carry out attacks against Israeli troops at the Karni Crossing.

UNRWA also appears to be in the business of cultivating new terrorists. The New York Times exposed in 2000 that UNRWA allowed terrorist groups to use their schools as "summer camps" so that 25,000 Palestinian children could receive paramilitary training, including instructions on how to prepare Molotov cocktails and roadside bombs.

UNRWA does not appear eager to prevent this kind of activity. When the U.S. government's General Accounting Office (GAO) asked UNRWA whether it screens beneficiaries for ties with terrorists, UNRWA claimed that it couldn't because such a screening would endanger its staff. Similarly, when the houses of six Palestinian families on UNRWA's registry were destroyed during bomb-making activities, UNRWA concluded there was not enough evidence to deny them benefits under the terrorist exclusion law.

 

Crickets = deafening silence.

In any case, brings me back to the story about how Israel targeted a school and said there was Hamas there and the left was shouting that evil Israel had to be wrong.

Reality is, we all know now what Hamas is, what they do, how they use their own people as fodder for publicity while ensuring they will be harmed or worse, how Israel has to protect their own people and how the international community is being played - it's just entertaining to see the contortions the terrorist apologists will go through to deny it.

 

The UNRWA is allied with Hamas. They are simply trying to rehabilitate their image with the world.

 

Rude!

But, yes, I admit your comment was the first to bring my attention to it. Which lead me to search for answers on my own. So thank you for your input.

 

Dear freeman, do you think Palestine has the barracks or regular camps for the properties? All Gaza have to be united to make something against on the biggest armies in the world. Please be fair enough to admit it, all poor Palestine is the army now. See the young soldiers see juvenile see women...

 

Dumb Post of the Day Gold Medal winner.

 

Ah yes, an opinion piece from the organ of the right-wing Jewish Policy Centre; an organisation with close links to the Republican party and AIPAC! No bias there, obviously...

 

no complaints about innocent civilians then as according to your post there aren't any in Gaza, right?

You do have a point relative to the OP though, they are not just human shields, they are willing to be human shields.

 

No, I do not agree.
People with minimal decency will keep the children out of it.
You want to hide the rockets, hide them in you house, hide them in your garden.
If you hide them in you Mosque and in your kids school, That mosque is going to be distroyed maybe with many inocent people inside it.
That school is going to be distroyed with the kids who went to learn or to play there. Those kids and their parents did not know they were used as human shields.
This is wrong and stupid.
Look how the Brits behaved in WW2, London was bombed, so they sent the children to the country so the adults could fight from London.
Look how the Israelis behave, the first thing they do is build personal bomb shelters in each flat, so every child will have a safe place to hide when rockets hit.
Only then do they send the fathers to war against the ones shooting the rockets.
But Hamas uses the cement to build bomb shelters for its leaders and uses the Gazan schools as weapon storage.

 

The Palestinians should take exemple from the French Resistance in WWII - when were these people using their own homes or meeting their fellow citizens? Never! They had clearly marked warehouses with top-notch security, and they were always marching in military fashion, in their clearly identified uniforms. That's how they survived.

:donkey

Okay, I'll admit that the school wasn't even remotely a good place to store weapons. Well, what would be correct to use as a cache? A factory? A church? That's the most densily habitated place of the planet we're talking about here - everywhere there's going to be women, children and/or elderlies.

Oh, and UNRWA works with Hamas because Hamas is the democratically elected authority in Palestine. Sometime people are such asses it's actually a solid case for suicide.

 

Please point me on a map the "Gazaean countryside".

It isn't "the first thing they did". Before doing that they ousted the native Palestinian natives, secure the seized land, corrupt democracies here and there to have political and economical support, build an oversized army with un-registered nukes, and then, and only then they built civilian protection systems.

 

Gaza is Hamastan.. a pro Al Queda area.
Palestinians are the source of violence in the Middle East.
That's by the way one of the reasons Egypt does not want any connection with them.
In general - Arabs hate Palestinians the most, next to Jews.

 

They might try not having illegal terrorist tools for a change and try removing the policy of no negotiation from their charter, that way no need for hiding place or civilian casualties.

Nobody says terrorists have the right to hide or even have weapons.

 

Everything there is documented fact. All of it is 100% true.

 

These "terrorist tools" pales when compared to the Israeli arsenal, which include un-registered nuclear weapons. Furthermore, why you would disarm Palestine? I suppose you won't preach the same for Israel, even thought it is the sole state out there that takes new ground every day, amarite?

Which side are you talking about?

Hamas is the democratically elected government of Palestine. Whatever weapons they have would be part of their legitimate arsenal now.

It's funny how you try to enforce things on people that you would never accept yourself.

 

I would rather says "100% pure".

Don't let your brain be such an easy thing to rape. Oppose some resistance, dammit!

 

They do but non are used exclusively to terrorize a civilian population to effect political goals as Hamas does.

Because they declared war and exclusively use terrorism to continue their blind acts of hatred.

Right. They are at war with an enemy who has declared it an refuses to make peace so why would they?

Hamas is yet they us this weapons to kill civilians, hardly defensive and very illegal.

 

Ah? I thought that was exactly what the IDF did - terrorize a civilian population to effect political goals.

These are more slogans than arguments. There are almost more fallacies than words in that sentance.

Of course Israel refuses peace. Why would they accept it? Israel has nothing to gain from peace. If you can restrain yourself from evading this one, please tell me how would peace benefit Israel.

Yeah - never did the IDF hurt any civilians with their weapons. IDF weapons only kill terrorists, since all they "eliminate" becomes a de facto terrorist. I'm pretty sure their nukes comes with the same features.

:dumbass