The attack on UNRWA is, in a sense, a microcosm of the assault on Gaza. On October 7, Hamas launched a brutal attack on Israel. It was atrocious, it was illegal. It was also something many of us had been warning was going to happen for years, because it’s what happens when you deny millions of people their rights and make them live hopeless lives filled with despair.
Israel used that crime to launch a far greater one, a genocide against the people of Gaza (and, on a smaller scale so far, in the West Bank) under the cover of “retaliating” against Hamas. Similarly, UNRWA’s opponents are using the allegations against 12 UNRWA employees of aiding the October 7 attack as cover to destroy the entire organization, a major contribution to genocide as it would render the delivery of humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza nearly impossible.
Yet if at least some of the response to October 7 was significantly enhanced by false stories of atrocities, a distressing number of which have already been exposed as lies, the cutoff of funding to UNRWA has been based entirely on allegations that the United States itself admitted it couldn’t verify but accepted anyway. My latest in Mondoweiss dives into all of this.