Category: Israel and refugees

U.S. contributes $40 million for Palestinian refugees (and Hamas)

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The State Department issued a press release on February 4:

The United States announced today that it is making an initial contribution of $40 million to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) to support UNRWA’s regular budget and emergency programs in the West Bank and Gaza. 

The $40 million contribution will provide critical health, education, and humanitarian services to 4.7 million Palestinian refugees across the region. Of this contribution, $30 million will support UNRWA’s core services in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, the West Bank, and Gaza. An additional $10 million will support UNRWA’s emergency appeal for the West Bank and Gaza, including emergency food assistance, and job creation programs. 

The United States is UNRWA’s largest bilateral donor. In 2009, the United States provided over $267 million to UNRWA, including $116.2 million to its General Fund, $119.5 million to its West Bank/Gaza emergency programs, $30 million to emergency programs in Lebanon, and $2.2 million to assist other Palestinians in the region.

That was the State Department’s press release in its entirety.  No American media have report this news, though several foreign papers have. The Israel National News site Arutz Sheva reports this relevant point:

The American funding comes despite a report commissioned by the European parliament, which showed that Hamas terrorists have been chosen by the agency’s labor union to oversee its Gaza facilities, which was part of a Canadian decision last month to stop its UNRWA funding.

We posted on the Canadian decision here. And here’s a post from last May on a Joel Mowbray piece on how the U.S. taxpayers are enriching Palestinian terrorists by our funding of UNRWA. (UNRWA is the UN agency responsible only for Palestinian refugees, while UNHCR is responsible for all other refugees. UNHCR’s policy is to resettle refugees back in their home countries or in other countries, while UNRWA’s policy is to keep the Palestinians as refugees forever, or until they can destroy Israel.)

Israel is serious about keeping out illegal immigrants. . .

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

. . . even if they try to pose as refugees. That was the message Prime Minister Netanyahu gave in a speech this week reported in Israel News.

“Infiltrators cause cultural, social and economic damage, and pull us towards the Third World,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at a Manufacturers Association assembly. 

“We suffer from a problem that actually stems from Israel’s economic success,” he said, explaining the problems that arise from the breached border with Egypt.  

“We have become almost the only First World country that can be reached by foot from the Third World. We are flooded with surge of refugees who threaten to wash away our achievements and damage our existence as a Jewish democratic state.”

“Almost” but not quite. The United States has probably the longest border with a third world country that can be walked across in many places.  The only reason our character and existence are not quite as threatened by our illegal aliens is that we are so big. Israel has only around 7 million people, and could easily be swamped by these immigrants.

Imagine an American president being so gutsy as to tell a meeting of manufacturers that they are going to be stopped from employing illegal aliens.  Can you think of any potential president who would?

Of course the guilt-playing left gets its licks in:

The Hotline for Migrant Workers was enraged by the prime minister’s remarks, and issued a response saying: “The danger to the Jewish state is not the refugees, but the many Jews in key positions who have forgotten that their parents were refugees, and who besmirch the persecuted in order to whitewash their submission to the manpower corporations.” 

Somehow I don’t think Netanyahu is going to be swayed by that. For one thing, it makes no sense. For another, he faces fiercer enemies than these folks, whoever they are. Bravo to him.

Palestinian “refugees” can’t settle in Lebanon — one more example of Arab irresponsibility and bigotry

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

A blog called Elder of Ziyon reports:

The US envoy to the Middle East just doomed any remote chance there might have ever been for a peaceful two-state solution.

Palestine Press Agency quotes Mitchell as having told his Lebanese hosts that the US “does not support the resettlement of the Palestinians” in Lebanon. The US Embassy website in Lebanon said “As the Special Envoy, Mitchell confirmed to Prime Minister Hariri in their meeting last evening the U.S. will not support the forced naturalization of Palestinians in Lebanon.”

Then follows a clear summary of the Palestinian problem, with emphasis on something we haven’t talked about much. Some highlights:

. . . the definition of “Palestinian refugee” is unique among all world refugees. The UNRWA created an entirely news class of refugees where the descendants of Palestinian Arab refugees are considered refugees themselves. Using this bizarre definition, the number of Palestinian Arab “refugees” is fated to grow, forever. It is simply impossible to imagine that they will all ever “return” to “Palestine.” They are now at about 10,000,000 and counting.

As far back as the 1950s, the world realized that there was no solution for the (then) hundreds of thousands of refugees that did not include their eventual resettlement in Arab countries. Yet the Arab League, in an astonishing display of bigotry against their fellow Arabs that persists to this day, ruled that no Palestinian Arabs can become naturalized citizens of Arab countries – while all other Arabs can.

This is, in sum, the major reason why millions of Arabs are stateless today. Even if you want to blame Israel for expelling every one of the 600,000 Arabs in 1948 (which is clearly not true,) the only people responsible for their continued suffering over the past 61 years are the Arab leaders who pretend to support them while refusing to take in their “brethren” and give them full rights.

The UN’s agency, UNRWA has been complicit in this dereliction of duty by the Arab leaders, never even suggesting that the Palestinians could settle anywhere but Israel, as far as I know. The blogger goes on to point out that any time Palestinians have had the opportunity to settle in an Arab country, they have jumped at the chance.

So today we have millions of people, falsely labeled as “refugees,” who never stepped foot in British Mandate Palestine and who, if they were any other group of people, would have become citizens of the nations they were born in. The reason is purely because of Arab bigotry and intransigence.

There is no realistic solution to the “Palestinian” problem as long as this naked bigotry is allowed to continue. Millions of Palestinian Arabs are not going to stream into a nation of “Palestine.” The only solution must include treating this population exactly the same way as other refugee populations are treated.

The US should be in the forefront of insisting that the “moderate” Arab nations and allies step up and take their share of responsibility for decades of Palestinian Arab suffering.

Instead, George Mitchell (who has Lebanese ancestry) has now officially stated that the US supports this institutionalized discrimination by Arab leaders. A golden opportunity to point out embedded Arab bigotry and to publicize and shame Arabs into taking responsibility for their treatment of Palestinian Arabs is now lost.

He points out:

 The losers, as always, are the actual Arabs of Palestinian Arab ancestry who are kept in limbo by the very people who are claiming to care the most about them.

Right you are, Elder. But there are other losers. Those are the Jews, both in Israel and worldwide. Thanks to a propaganda blitz that’s gone on for decades, this pitiful state of the Palestinians is blamed on Israel in the most hateful, disgusting and dishonest way. So successful has this been that the worldwide hatred for Israel is now moving into hatred for Jews in general, and in some ostensibly civilized countries in Europe Jews are not safe.

Coincidentally, just before I read Elder of Ziyon’s post a friend sent me this video from Just Journalism, a new British website devoted to fighting the new anti-Semitism and anti-Israeli press coverage that dominates the UK media and helps spread the virus in Britain.

Canada withdraws funds from UNRWA, the UN agency that funds Palestinian “refugees”

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

David Bedein reports in the Philadelphia Bulletin:

Jerusalem — A senior Canadian government official has briefed officials in Israel and the Palestinian Authority with the news of Canada’s decision to defund the United Nations Refugee Works Agency (UNRWA) which administers 59 refugee camps for Palestinian Arab refugees and their descendents who left their homes in the wake of the 1948 war.

UNRWA maintains Palestinian Arab refugees in their facilities under the premise and promise of return to homes and villages from 1948 that no longer exist.

All other U.N. refugee camps around the world ascribe to the principles of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), which mandates that a refugee has a right to be resettled in new conditions.

Apparently the European Union commissioned a report on UNRWA which concluded that Hamas terrorists were administering UNRWA facilities.  We’ve reported on Hamas’s domination of UNRWA before (here, for example) though not on the EU report. In October I posted on a bill in the House of Representatives to attempt to block UNRWA’s terror ties; the bill had been stalled in the Foreign Affairs Committee (chaired by Howard Berman, D-CA) since January 2009 and is still there a year after its introduction.

I guess Canada is way ahead of us here, as they have taken the only kind of action that counts in response to the EU report. Bedein concludes:

Canada heads the “Refugee Working Group (RWG),” a subgroup of the Middle East negotiation process which was established in the wake of the Madrid Middle East Summit in October 1991, to oversee Palestinian refugee policy for the 38 nations that contribute to UNRWA.

The fact that Canada has used its position as the head of the RWG to defund UNRWA will most likely not go unnoticed by the 38 countries that contribute to the half a billion-dollar UNRWA budget.

 The U.S. under our current government no longer cares much about promoting human rights and fighting Islamic terrorism, so let’s hope some other countries gather up their courage to take our place until we can resume our leadership.

Some other reports here, here, and here make it clear that Canada is not stopping its aid to Palestinians, but the aid will now go directly to  specific projects rather than through UNRWA.

Al Qaeda is recruiting in Palestinian refugee camps

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

David Bedein reports in the Philadelphia Bulletin:

 In a development that could cause concern for the United States, al-Qaida appears to be targeting Palestinian refugee camps for recruitment, according to a report by the Washington-based Jamestown foundation.

The report documents how the al-Qaida-aligned Fatah Al Islam was recruiting cells in such United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) Lebanese camps as Bidawi and Burj Al Shamali.

….Jamestown said Palestinians were undergoing radicalization and adopting the al-Qaida doctrine of jihad, or holy war.

“Socio-political conditions in these camps, which have been under the control of the secular Palestinian political organizations, play an important role in increasing the influence of Salafism,” the report said.

Last year, al-Qaida chief Osama Bin Laden addressed the Palestinians at least three times and appealed for their participation in his Islamist war against the West. Mr. Bin Laden has urged Palestinians to fight the United States in Iraq before moving on to Israel.

Checking the Jamestown Foundation website, I see that their report is from October 30. But since I haven’t seen anything about it before, it’s worth posting.  The mainstream media are so tied to the storyline of “Israel is evil, Palestinians are pitiful victims” that it is difficult for them to notice a report like this which highlights a real threat coming out of the camps — that is, a potential threat to the U.S., not just to Israel, which doesn’t merit their sympathy.