25-Nov-06: Memo to "Refugee" Camp Manager: Words Kill

Earlier this week, UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) Commissioner-General Karen Koning AbuZayd said this:

“I fully recognize the right and responsibility of Israel to protect its citizens, and its legitimate concern about the home-made rockets fired from Gaza. But for humanitarian agencies such as UNRWA it is becoming increasingly difficult to deal with the aftermath of such military operations without questioning their justification, their proportionality and their effects.”

We have a suggestion for Mrs. Koning AbuZayd: If you're going to question the justification, proportionality and effects of the Israeli "aftermath", perhaps it's time to question whether your use of the expression "home-made rockets" makes sense.
Could this be simple naivete on Mrs Konig AbuZayd's part? Not likely since she's perfectly aware of the number of rockets fired from within and near the camps she manages.

Far more likely, it's a conscious attempt at diminishing the dangers of this particular aspect of Palestinian terror. After all, insisting as long and as consistently as UNRWA does, that terror attacks on Israelis are trivial is part of a strategy to delegitimize Israel's acts of self-defence. The intended result: more Israeli deaths.

While we're at it, here's some background about UNRWA for those wondering how many other refugee agencies are operated by the United Nations.

• The United Nations deals with the world's refugees with a single agency ­, the U.N. High Commission for Refugees­. But the Palestinian refugees have their very own agency ­ - UNRWA ­ - with a particular mission.
• UNRWA was founded in 1949. Since that time, it has consistently abused its mandate and become a tool of terror. UNRWA has an annual $400 million budget (which includes $90 million from the U.S.) This compares with the $881 million budget for the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR).
• Some 23,000 UNRWA employees care for an estimated 3.9 million Arab “refugees,” compared with an UNHCR staff of 5,000 to manage relief for nearly 20 million other refugees in the world today.
• UNRWA's primary mission has never been to help the Palestinians deal with the reality of the post-1948 world. Resettling the Palestinians was never, and is not, the point. No UNRWA camp has ever shut down.
• UNRWA exists to keep the Palestinians alive exactly where they are. This serves, for those interested in such convoluted and sick logic, as the justification for continued conflict with Israel.
• Does UNRWA employ terrorists? Maybe. "I am sure that there are Hamas members on the UNRWA payroll and I don't see that as a crime... we do not do political vetting and exclude people from one persuasion as against another." That's a statement by Peter Hansen, UNRWA's head speaking in 2004. (Hamas is the terror organization that claimed responsibility for a massacre in the Sbarro restaurant in the centre of Jerusalem where our fifteen year-old daughter was murdered in 2001.)
• UNRWA employees have been filmed using UN ambulances and other equipment to transport armed terrorists, bombs and other weapons.
• UNRWA retirement benefits include a fund whose assets now total some $10 billion. No other UN agency has such a fund.