Democrats funding terrorism in Middle East
The House Appropriations Committee this month approved the annual foreign aid bill on a party-line vote. The proposal includes the Biden administration’s full request to provide at least $150 million, with no strings attached, to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. The proposal is highly controversial, with scrutiny growing over the organization’s ties to terrorist entities in Gaza. As Senate appropriators eye their own markup, now is not the time for blank checks. Members of both parties should demand much-needed changes.
The urgent need for reform and oversight of UNRWA has been obvious for years. The organization has inflated its registry by falsely accepting the descendants of refugees into its ranks. This has led to bloated budgets and the needless perpetuation of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
But the need for reform became increasingly obvious in the wake of the recent Gaza war. The drama began when the guns fell silent. Matthias Schmale, the director of operations for UNRWA in Gaza, told Israel’s Channel 12 that Israeli military operations during the war were carried out with “sophistication” and “precision.” This ran counter to the Hamas narrative that Israel was attacking Gaza indiscriminately. Indeed, Schmale was confirming that Israel operated within bounds of international law during the war.
Schmale also noted, to the surprise of the Israeli anchor interviewing him, that during “the 11 days of war, we did not run out of food, water, and supplies …. So, from my point of view, there is no acute or serious shortage of medical supplies, food, or water.” Again, this was not the Hamas narrative.
Finally, Schmale ceded that UNRWA “cannot work in a place like Gaza without coordinating with the local authorities [Hamas]; that’s true for any autocratic regime of this nature.” This was the real bombshell. Schmale’s interview acknowledged that UNRWA was actively coordinating with Hamas — a terrorist group pursuant to the laws of most Western countries that support his agency.
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Hamas should be defunded. It is a terrorist organization. It has no legitimate claim to Israeli lands.
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