The US Should Penalize UNRWA — Not Israel

This week, Israel diminished a longstanding source of terrorist support – and the US should be glad.

On October 28, Israel’s legislature enacted two bills that effectively blocked the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) from providing relief services to Palestinians in a zone that includes Gaza. The US opposed the measures.

In addition, by a letter on October 13, the Biden administration warned that if Israel did not immediately “surge” the pace and quantity of relief supplies to Gaza, the US might be legally compelled by Section 6201 of the US Foreign Assistance Act to curtail its sale of weapons to Israel.

In reality, Section 301(c) of the same law should compel President Biden to harden his policy against UNRWA, instead of opposing Israel’s action; no boycott of weapons to Israel is justified under Section 6201.

UNRWA was founded in 1949 to build tent cities with temporary emergency provisions such as food and water for Arab refugees after the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Unfortunately, that quick-fix organization gradually swelled into a perpetual, billion-dollar-a-year welfare bureaucracy dedicated officially to helping Palestinians and unofficially to exterminating Israel.

UNRWA’s anti-Israeli animus became even more apparent during Hamas’ October 7, 2023 terrorist invasion of Israel.

After the Hamas murder spree, Israeli intelligence uncovered a web of UNRWA connections to terrorist organizations. According to Israel’s well-supported findings, over 25 Gaza-based UNRWA employees participated in the October 7th atrocities; another 30 facilitated those crimes with logistics and weapons procurement; and approximately 190 doubled as operatives of Hamas or Islamic Palestinian Jihad.

Moreover, a group of 3,000 UNRWA teachers celebrated the slaughter in postings to the Telegram messaging platform, and about 10 percent of UNRWA’s 12,000-strong Gaza workforce exhibited ties to terror groups. In addition, Hamas built a data center under UNRWA’s Gaza headquarters and stored munitions in UNRWA schools, maneuvers that followed Hamas’ longstanding practice of turning civilians into human shields.

UNRWA has historically fostered Islamist extremism. UNRWA teachers radicalize students to wage holy war against Jews and martyr themselves to “liberate” Israel. The educators also falsely instruct that an imagined six million Palestinian “refugees” have a “right of return” through “armed resistance” to Israel, where they will convert the world’s only Jewish-majority state into the 58th Muslim-majority state.

In order to prevent the eviction of UNRWA from worsening the dire condition of some two million Gazans, the Israeli government has called for UN support services in Gaza, eastern Jerusalem, and the West Bank to be transferred to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the relief provider that serves people who legally qualify as refugees. The proposed transfer must be swift and smooth, so no aid recipients fall through the cracks. Until the UNHCR takes charge, other NGOs in Gaza should — and must — fill the gap.

The Knesset action complements President Biden’s own legal response to UNRWA’s malfeasance. In March 2024, he suspended America’s $300 million annual funding to UNRWA because the entity had violated the above-referenced Section 301(c). That law required UNRWA to take “all possible measures” to prevent its US donations from reaching anyone engaged in terrorism. Yet UNRWA did the opposite. It employed and harbored terrorists. Such inbred criminality should persuade the president to reenforce Section 301(c) by blessing UNRWA’s demise.

The above-noted Section 6201, which requires the US to halt military sales where countries restrict the flow of humanitarian products to needy populations, should not be enforced against Israel for two reasons. First, Israel has obeyed the US demand to surge humanitarian aid into Gaza, even though Hamas attacks the Israeli aid facilitators and steals an estimated 50% of the needed goods. Second, 6201 authorizes the president to continue the given military transfers if necessary for national security reasons. In this case, the reasons are abundant. Israel is a close US ally under withering, unprovoked terrorist attack on seven fronts. Some of the terrorist factions hold hostages from both Israel and the US.

Arming Israel actually furthers the humanitarian goal of Section 6201. Israeli troops must defeat Hamas, so the militants will stop their criminal acts of stealing the life-saving cargo, exploiting Gazans as human shields, and holding hostages. Conversely, withholding military tools from Israel may prolong the human suffering.

Under the Hamas-UNRWA regime, human rights are crudely abused. Gazans should be treated like human beings, not human shields. And a UN agency should promote peace, not war.

Joel M. Margolis is the Legal Commentator, American Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists, U.S. Affiliate of the International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists. His 2001 book, The Israeli-Palestinian Legal War, analyzed the major legal issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Previously he worked as a telecommunications lawyer in both the public and private sectors.

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