NEW YORK (Press Release) — Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s (SWC’s) associate dean and director of global social action, has called on donor nations to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (“UNRWA”) to either pull their funding from the scandal-plagued agency or demand far greater transparency as well as complete restructuring of the UN mechanism for delivering assistance.
Cooper issued his call Thursday at press conference hosted by the United Nations Correspondents’ Association. He was joined on the podium by Dr. Arnon Groiss, an expert on UNWRA and Palestinian Authority textbooks that glorify terrorism and deny the existence and legitimacy of Israel; David Bedein, director of the Center for Near-East Research; and Bassam Eid, a Palestinian human rights activist who grew up in an UNRWA refugee camp.
“The SWC agrees with critics who believe the scandal-riddled agency has to go,” Cooper said. “To be clear Palestinians who need care should continue to receive that care. We agree that Palestinian children, including those In Gaza, need to be in school. The funding sources are there but the UNRWA structure is no longer the answer.”
In 1949, the United Nations General Assembly established UNRWA with a temporary mandate to provide shelter and service for half a million Arab refugees from the 1948 war. Today, more than 70 years later, UNRWA serves more than 5 million descendants of Arab refugees in camps. Earlier this summer, there were revelations of a massive fraud that includes major financial misdeeds on the part of UNRWA’s commissioner general Pierre Krähenbüh. The UN General Assembly, this fall, will consider the extension of the UNRWA mandate for yet another five years. The UNRWA discussion at the General Assembly will take place under the shadow of a major financial scandal, growing concerns over its educational activities that validate the so-called Right of Return, and the influence of Hamas in Gaza schools.
Cooper explained that a fifth generation of Palestinians is living with refugee status in no small measure because the UNRWA system has utterly failed them and their ancestors. Rather than promoting ways for Palestinians to build the foundation for sustained economic development, civil society, independence and peaceful co-existence with Israel, UNRWA continues to promote the adoption of a victim mentality that brainwashes children to reject Israel, blame Jews for the conditions in which Palestinians live and seek revenge through violence.
“Palestinian children continue to be targets of indoctrination that holds up terrorists as heroes, denies any legitimacy of a Jewish historic presence in the Holy Land and refuses to even mention Israel in a single map.”
Cooper, Bedien, Eid and Groiss recently met with Darko Mocibob a top advisor to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres to express their concern about long-standing use of toxic messages to indoctrinate Palestinian children in UNRWA-run or supported schools. They shared with Mocibob a series of videos, shot by a team under the Bedein’s direction, which confirm the degree to which students in UNRWA schools internalize messages of hate, violence and terrorism.
Next week Rabbi Cooper, Dr. Gross and Mr. Bedein will meet with German leaders in Berlin to discuss the UNWRA crisis and how important donor nations, led by Germany, can make a real contribution to a peaceful future in the Holy Land.
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Preceding provided by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which is located in Los Angeles.