UNRWA Must Go!

By Walter E. Block

World opinion, for a change, is piling up against Israel. What did the Zionist entity do so badly this time? It attacked that holiest of holies, the United Nations!

Did the IDF go all the way from the Middle East to the Isle of Manhattan perhaps to bomb the UN headquarters? Not a bit of it. Instead, it engaged against Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the UN forces placed there suffered some collateral damage. These soldiers were located there under the authority of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, UNRWA for short.

And what, pray tell, were these international soldiers doing south of the Litani River in the first place? Why, they were there to prevent the Hezbollah from launching bombs, rockets and drones at the country to the south of them. And how did that work out? To ask this is to answer it. But just in case the answer is uncertain, we may say without much fear of contradiction: Not too well. As a result of their activities, tens of thousands of Israelis had to be removed from the northern part of their country, for the sake of safety.

Instead of serving as the peace keepers, these soldiers did the very opposite. They were in effect the Swiss Cheese of peace keeping; a very porous Swiss Cheese, mostly holes, very little cheese. They were supposed to be a bulwark, a fence, preventing Hezbollah from attacking Israel from its north. Instead, these terrorists have been a viper at the bosom of Lebanon, and neither the UN nor the Lebanese Army was able to compel them to keep the peace.

Dare I mention the possibility that this was not inadvertent? That this was, instead, the intention behind the location of these international troops? The claim to be considered is that the purpose was to serve as a shield for Hezbollah, allowing them to wreak havoc in northern Israel. Is there any evidence for so radical a contention? Yes there is. Consider the following:

  1. UNRWA members took part in the pogrom of October 7, 2023, alongside their brothers in arms, Hamas. To be sure, several of these participants were later fired, but, still, this does not shed a good light on this organization. It is as if the referee of the game charged over the goal line and scored a touchdown. Not very kosher.
  1. Despite the fact that there are mass murders all over our unhappy criminally infested globe, complaints against Israel, validated by the UN, were more than double those registered against all other nations on the planet put together. My oh, my, Israel must be a real awful place for anything like that to have occurred, based upon the considered findings of this disinterested organization. If the sarcasm here is not apparent, I must be losing my touch.
  1. Most recently, the UNRWA was exposed as a protectorate for Hezbollah, doing little or nothing to prevent the barrage of armaments headed south from Lebanon. The UN soldiers have located themselves in the midst of this terrorist organization, south of the Litani River. They are being used by Hezbollah in something of a similar pattern of how Hamas utilizes the Gazans: as shields. UNRWA now has the unspeakable gall to protest being targeted by the IDF.

Suppose Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Rwanda, France or any of the other many countries whose soldiers comprise UNRWA forces, were to be located as a buffer between Ukraine and Russia. Posit that they were to offer themselves as a peacekeeper between these two warring nations. Only they allowed missiles to be launched in only one direction, not the other. Would not the thus aggrieved party have a right to object? Perhaps to more than object, but to take steps to remove this threat to their national sovereignty? It seems difficult to object to this eminently reasonable conclusion.

Whether it concerns Lebanon and Israel, or Russia and Ukraine, these actual and hypothetical placements of UN soldiers must end. Either these forces must actually do the job they were placed there to do, or at the very least try do accomplish this goal, or they should depart. Far worse than failure would be to actively take the side of one or the other of the belligerent parties. The UN would then hardly have the moral standing to complain that the other side did not treat them as a neutral army.

It is the same in the Middle East. The UN has failed, dismally, to promote peace between Lebanon (Hezbollah!) and Israel, their appointed task dating from 2006. They sided with the former, not the latter. Do they really expect Israel to adopt a hands off policy? To stand idly by and allow the UN forces to continue to serve as a protectorate for the terrorist Hezbollah organization? If so, they have another think coming, an entirely different one.

January 21, 2025 | 2 Comments »

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  1. south of the litany? drop leaflets and knock on their roofs……

    tell them we are coming…………

    Eddie…..aka…..tzvi