Free Republic

… A statement Wednesday says Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is pleased that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government decided to restart the funding for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency. Canada discontinued the funding in 2010 during the administration of Conservative leader Stephen Harper amid criticism that the agency funded schools that had become hotbeds of anti-Israeli extremism. …

New review of Palestinian Authority textbooks finds systematic incitement against Jews, erasure of Israel continues. A review of dozens of Palestinian Authority educational books for the 2015-2016 school year found that the PA education system continues to encourage terror against Jews and completely ignores the Holocaust in history books discussing World War II. In addition, this year's textbooks continue to systematically erase the State of Israel from maps and texts. Gal Berger, a journalist focusing on Palestinian affairs with Reshet B, carried out a comprehensive investigation of about 70 textbooks for first through twelfth grades on the subjects of civics,...

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was put on the spot Tuesday by Interim Opposition head Rona Ambrose over reports that he plans to give UNRWA $15 million, despite its well-documented ties to the Hamas terrorist organization in Gaza. [...] Ambrose, an MP of the Conservative Party, noted how UNRWA was documented storing Hamas rockets and weapons "designed to kill Israeli citizens" - as even the UNRWA chief admitted last June - and likewise has actively taken part in inciting anti-Semitic violence. In his complete dodge of the serious question, Trudeau noted that he welcomed UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon to Ottawa...

It is a common misconception that around 650,000 Palestinian refugees were created because of fighting that took place in 1948. But a closer look at both the population data and statements made by UN officials at the time suggest that the true figure is much lower, possibly as low as 270,000. The conventional figure of 650,000 cannot be true for more than one reason. Firstly, there were fewer than 660,000 Arabs living in the part of Palestine that eventually became Israel; and secondly, UNRWA (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency), either through incompetence or deliberate manipulation, handed out multiple...

Mohammed Assaf, the Gazan winner of 2013's Arab Idol contest, was answering questions from fans in a Skype phone-in this week when he received a comment from an Israeli caller who said: "You should come to Israel...you have Israeli blood," the fan said. Assaf replied, "I spit on you and Israel" before going on to answer other fans' questions. It is not clear if the fan was a Jew or an Arab. "I don't want to talk about this issue too much," Assaf told The New Arab afterward. "The person who said that wanted to provoke me and it's known...

My weekend column in on the Palestinians’ new intifada, the Obama State Department’s disgraceful response to it, and how Islamists and Leftists continue to push for the “One State Solution”—no more Jewish state—an objective that is helped along by the “Two State Solution” fantasy peddled by the bipartisan Beltway. A related development: A watchdog group, UN Watch, reports that staffers at a major United Nations agency with a long history of encouraging Palestinian terrorism, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), is inciting the latest spate of attacks in Israel. …

GENEVA, September 1, 2015 - UN Watch released a new report today documenting 12 different Facebook accounts operated by UNRWA officials (see images below) that openly incite to antisemitism and terrorism, and urged UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and UNRWA chief Pierre Krähenbühl to terminate the responsible officials, condemn the offending posts, and establish a commission of inquiry, comprised of representatives of top donor states (see chart at right), to investigate the culture of impunity for perpetrators of racism and incitement that pervades UNRWA. “The pattern and practice of UNRWA school principals, teachers and staff members posting antisemitic and terror-inciting images...

UNRWA’s latest appeal for more than $100 million in special additional funding should be treated in the same way as the boy who cried wolf The United Nations Relief and Works Agency, UNRWA, which serves Palestinian “refugees,” is constantly complaining of budget deficits. No matter how much money it sucks out of the United States, European Union countries and other donors, it is never enough. It is always pleading for more money, which it is continuing to do today with another one of its special appeals. It is time to stop throwing good money after bad to this dysfunctional UN...

Hamas continues to lead daily protests against the intention of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), to cut its services in light of a deficit of more than $100 million. Suheil al-Hindi, Chairman of the Arab Teachers Union of UNRWA, which is affiliated with Hamas, warned the UNRWA against a delay in the start of the upcoming school year, stressing that education is a "red line" and that interfering with it could lead to a "disruption of the peace." In a statement Friday, ​​Hamas warned that cuts in UNRWA services is a move that will...

As the eyes of the world focus on the dysfunctional U.S.-Iranian accord, another dysfunctional accord with the U.S. government has escaped public scrutiny: The new accord reached between America and UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which was recently posted on the State Department website. he U.S., the largest funder of UNRWA (at $400 million this year, one third of the UNRWA budget), should have stipulated that the funding could only go to resettle UNRWA’s client population: 5.4 million descendents of Arab refugees from the 1948 war. Yet the U.S.-UNRWA accord mentions nothing of the kind. Instead, it...

Ein el Helwe Palestinian camp, Lebanon: This is one of the questions ricocheting between Palestinians in Syria and Lebanon, posed also by ISIS (Da’ish) operatives, as the hot summer months and plummeting quality of existence raise tensions in the refugee camps and social gatherings. With its resilience, on-the-ground “achievements”, adaptability, global franchising, copy-cat knock-offs, chameleon-like adaptations, combinations and permutations, and slick honing of medium and message, ISIS is offering oppressed and desperate populations in this region both hope and fantasy for escaping their deepening misery. The dream is to escape abject poverty and indignity by any means necessary, and joining...

The UN’s condemnation of the IDF’s conduct in Operation Protective Edge surprises no one, Jewish Home chairman and Education Minister Naftali Bennett commented Friday. “The UN has never been honest,” he said, during an interview with Army Radio. “The world will always come to us with complaints, and we need to focus on keeping ourselves safe.” …

Pierre Krahenbuhl, Commissioner-General of UNRWA, the UN body tasked with aiding "Palestinian refugees," admitted on Wednesday that Hamas terrorists hid weapons at UNRWA facilities during their terror war against Israel last summer. "We were the ones who found the weapons caches in our facilities during inspections," Krahenbuhl told Yedioth Aharonoth in an interview. "The reason that the whole world knew about it is that we told them." Krahenbuhl's reference is to at least three separate occasions in which rockets were found at UNRWA facilities. After the first finding of rockets at an UNRWA school, UNRWA workers reportedly called Hamas to...

Israel has often complained that UNRWA, the UN body dealing with "Palestinian refugees," merely exists to continue the conflict without resettling the people it treats as the UN does with all other refugees, but apparently the Palestinian Arabs are unhappy with the organization too - for not giving them enough, and for giving too much to their brethern in Syria's Yarmouk neighborhood. Residents of Gaza defined as "refugees," namely the descendants of Arab residents who left Israel in the 1948 War of Independence, are protesting against UNRWA after the latter transferred resources to displaced Palestinian Arab residents of the Yarmouk...

An explosive device went off near the offices of the UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) in Gaza City Saturday night, AFP reported. A second struck near police headquarters, the report said. UNRWA and Gaza security officials said there were no dead or injured. […] UNRWA facilities in Gaza were at the forefront during last year’s Operation Protective Edge. During the operation, no fewer than three UNRWA schools were found to be serving for storage of rockets for the terrorist organizations Hamas and Islamic Jihad. …

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Islamic State has taken control of 90 percent of a Palestinian refugee camp on the Damascus outskirts where 18,000 civilians have suffered years of bombing, army siege and militia control, a monitoring group said on Saturday. The hardline group's offensive in Yarmouk gives it a major presence in the capital. Islamic State, the most powerful insurgent group in Syria, is now only a few kilometers from President Bashar al-Assad's seat of power. The United Nations has said it is extremely concerned about the safety and protection of Syrians and Palestinians in the camp. Civilians trapped there have...

Dennis Ross and David Makovsky in Israel’s Drive Toward Self-Destruction, argue that Netanyahu must offer up hope to Palestinians or face a revived de-legitimization movement. They’re certainly right to point out that the delegitimation movement will grow, but they are wrong to suggest that the answer is for Israel to offer hope to the Palestinians. How facile is that? They argue that what Israel needs to do is begin capitulating even before the negotiations commence, let alone, conclude. They want Israel to give up its bargaining chips for nothing in return. The Palestinians don’t hope to be given a state,...

On Wednesday President Obama met with certain Muslim leaders in the White House — but the White House refused to state exactly who they were. Sadly, the president fails to realize it’s not his house. It belongs to the American people. I’m quite sure we’ll eventually find out exactly who these individuals were — probably ideologically aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood cohorts who recently visited the State Department. But I hope whoever it was, they discussed this particular topic. As reported by Fox News, “Islamic State militants in Iraq have committed “gross human rights abuses” that may amount to war...

During the Hamas attacks on Israel, in which the UNRWA whose local staff is dominated by Hamas supporters was complicit, Chris Gunness had become its public face, appearing everywhere and even breaking down during one broadcast. Now Gunness has suffered another breakdown, this time on Twitter. Gunness lost his cool over an op-ed written by a Palestinian Arab and published in the Jerusalem Post which blamed UNRWA for prolonging the suffering of his people in order to justify its existence and deepen its coffers.Bassem Eid, the author of that op-ed, is the founder and director of the Jerusalem-based Palestinian Human...

Published: 06/13/07, 1:55 PM Hamas Publishes Fatah Hit-List, Confiscates US-Supplied Weapons by Ezra HaLevi (IsraelNN.com) The civil war between Hamas and Fatah terrorists raged on in Gaza Wednesday, with Hamas on the verge of victory. Hamas seized thousands of weapons and vehicles granted to Fatah by the Oslo Accords. A Hamas spokesman said that a decision had been taken to kill all of Fatah’s leading officials, who he referred to as “dogs beholden to their Israeli masters.” Hamas has distributed a list of at least 30 Fatah officials it seeks to have killed for complicity, they say, in a US-backed...