The countries of the European Union are divided over whether to continue aid to Gaza. However, the question of whether it is possible to help the civilian population without strengthening Hamas is not part of the current debate.
- Most international aid to Gaza is channeled through UNRWA, a UN agency dedicated exclusively to Palestinian refugees and their descendants… Unfortunately, UNRWA’s very existence and modus operandi directly reinforce Hamas. For this international organization, though there are only a handful of surviving refugees from 1948, supposed “refugee status” is passed down from father to son, so there are now around five times as many “refugees” in Gaza as there were originally.
- It appears intended as political thorn to be administered for the purpose of maligning Israel for a war that was started by five Arab armies… which they then lost. Perhaps they should have thought of that before they started the war.
- Meanwhile, roughly the same number of Jewish refugees, about 650,000, were fleeing for their lives from Arab countries to Israel. The newly created Jewish state, about the size of New Jersey or two-thirds of Belgium, and with no funds, managed to absorb everyone.
- Given Palestinian demographics, return to the places deserted in 1948 would mean the end of the Jewish state of Israel, and is just as utopian as the idea of the returning German refugees from 1945 to areas of pre-war Germany, Poland or the Czech Republic.
- [A]id, even humanitarian aid, to dictatorial countries inevitably strengthens that power, even more so with an Islamist totalitarian power such as Hamas, which does not care about the well-being of its citizen as Western countries do.
- The US and the EU, if they want to continue officially supporting an increasingly unrealistic “two-state solution”, should first stop funding UNRWA, whose tasks could eventually be taken over by other organizations unrelated to refugee status.
- UNRWA, which is inordinately active in education, has been criticized for helping to indoctrinate children with radical Hamas rhetoric through school textbooks and extremist teachers…. UNRWA does not have the reputation of being accountable. A recent report discloses that “UN Teachers Call To Murder Jews.”
- The problem is therefore not, as we hear today in European circles, to avoid supporting organizations linked to Hamas. All aid benefits Hamas, which can then concentrate on war and terrorism, since it is largely exempt from the tasks normally devolved to those who control a territory.
- No one will dispute that it is useful to teach Gaza’s children to read and write, but it is legitimate to question whether literacy training is actually being used to indoctrinate students and ignite a terrorist drift…
- Sometimes, refraining from assisting people is the least bad solution when there is no good one… [O]ne wonders why the United States and the European Union want to help in Gaza and thus help Hamas… It is also usually not clear how much aid actually gets to its intended recipients and how much ends up in Hamas’s coffers.
- A massacre on this scale, rewarded by the cessation of hostilities when it suits the aggressor, then having others come and clean up after them, would only consecrate their efforts. Churchill did not call for a ceasefire after the German bombings on London, nor did Roosevelt after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor.
- The Israelis have dropped thousands of leaflets over northern Gaza telling the people immediately to go to southern Gaza; Hamas instantly announced that the leaflets were merely propaganda, ordered its citizens not to move, and reportedly is now blocking their passage there.
- Today, “standing by Israel” means supporting this democracy’s difficult war against a savage terrorist totalitarian movement, and not urging Israel to stop before its critical mission is accomplished.
The countries of the European Union are divided over whether to continue aid to Gaza. However, the question of whether it is possible to help the civilian population there without strengthening Hamas is not part of the current debate.
Most international aid to Gaza is channeled through UNRWA, a UN agency dedicated exclusively to Palestinian refugees and their descendants. In 2018, then US President Donald Trump stopped US funding for UNRWA, but the Biden administration resumed funding, with $222 million in 2022, and the United States is once again the leading contributor. With 44% of donations, the European Union and its member countries contribute almost half of the UNRWA budget.
Unfortunately, UNRWA’s very existence and modus operandi directly reinforce Hamas. For this international organization, though there are only a handful of surviving refugees from 1948, supposed “refugee status” is passed down from father to son, so there are now around five times as many “refugees” in Gaza as there were originally.
No.
Because they understood that ending WWI with an armistice paved the way for WWII. Hitler rose to power by claiming that but for the armistice, Germany would have won and he blamed the armistice on the Jews.
Successive Israeli governments have ignored this lesson, not once, but repeatedly!
And it applies even more here because the sole objective of Hamas is to exterminate all Jews. Hamas is a Nazi movement. It must be extirpated along with any civilians who get in the way.
And in the West, the same draconic suspension of civil rights that has been applied to lockdown/vaccine resisters and now to Trump supporters (which was applied to anti-war protesters during the Civil War and both World Wars in the U.S., not to mention the Korean War) should be applied to pro-Hamas activists including student groups, journalists, and demonstrators. They should all be thrown in prison and the key thrown away.